Council Cleaning Con

THE CITY COUNCIL ALWAYS AMAZES ME BY THEIR SHIRKING OF RESPONSIBILITY.

Take this poster for example.  Double left click on the image to enlarge.

This is a poster in a charity chop window on Kilmarnock Rd (which is the main street in Shawlands). It is about so-called “Community cleaning of a lane”.

Yes, it is advertising the fact that the council wants local residents to clean their own streets and lane.  Hey, isn’t that what we pay council tax for?

Things are getting worse when the council can take council tax from us, and then get us to do the work ourselves! How Bizarre!

Guttered

THE COUNCIL ARE SPENDING MILLIONS INSULATING COUNCIL HOUSES.

The trouble is that they are not doing a very good job where the council property meets a privately owned property as shown in the picture to the right.

As ever, double left click on pictures to enlarge.

The above picture shows that it is not confined to new meeting old — even when dealing with a new-new interface, they have screwed this up! What you are looking at are two examples of stupidity.  The rainwater gutter could have been trimmed shorter to allow a full and proper rendering, but instead, the full original length was allowed to remain unchanged, and the insulation and new rendering cut around it!

This is completely unbelievable, it creates a heat bridge and one of the most likely sources of damp in a building I have ever seen. Things are certainly getting worse!

Good For Nothing

I SPOTTED THIS WEIRD CONSTRUCTION IN THE CITY CENTRE RECENTLY, AND WONDERED WHAT IT MIGHT BE (FOR).

Please double click on the pictures to enlarge for better viewing.

Look at it! There is a flight of stairs and a platform with a steel mesh surface.  There are safety handrails all round too — but what is it for?

Can you work it out? We can’t see the point of this thing.  It is sort of like a fire escape or access way, but as it does not connect to anything, these have to be ruled out. There is no swimming pool, so it cannot be an ugly diving board!

Such things are expensive, so things must be getting worse when this becomes a requirement!

Hospital Parking

HOSPITAL PARKING WAS A POLITICAL HOT POTATO. IT’S NOW FREE.

However, things are getting worse when the signs are so confusing!

Click on Picture to Enlarge.

It says –

“New Parking Arrangements
From 31st December 2008
*No car parking charges
*Unauthorised Car parking
Notices in Force
MAXIMUM STAY
4 HOURS
(Monday to Friday)
Exemptions for patients and visitors”

Now, I don’t know about you, but “free car parking at all Scottish Hospitals” seems easy to understand. “No Car Parking Charges” pretty much covers that.

So — what’s this about a 4 hour maximum stay?

Now, there is a suggestion that this 4 hour maximum is flexible if you are a patient or visitor (i.e. almost everyone), only nurses and doctors will be getting tickets then. Weird!

What confused me the most was the “Unauthorised Parking Notices in Force” — what exactly does that mean — unless parking is “authorised” in the first place, it is meaningless.

Pot Luck on Roads

THE ROADS ARE IN A DREADFUL STATE.

However, it seems that the council’s new LLCs would rather spend our tax-quids on speed cameras and speed humps in parking bays than fix the pot holes!

It is no exaggeration, and there is often no opportunity to avoid driving into them because of cars parked either side of the road.

These photographs were taken at the Battlefield monument right outside the Victoria Infirmary (one of the two southside hospitals in Glasgow city).  I pity the occupants of ambulances that have to deal with these pot holes on a daily basis!

Mind you, according to a news story I read, the repairs are never done very well. It’s all one big money-spinning racket. We’re going to pot (holes) — and, yes, things are still getting worse!

Last Bus Unknown

SOME OTHER BUS COMPANY WILL BE WORKING THIS ROUTE SOMETIMES, BUT WE’RE NOT GOING TO TELL YOU WHO IT IS –  JUST THAT IT ‘AIN’T US, SO THERE!

That is basically what the following notice is about (please double click on the image to see it enlarged).

This is what it states:

First transforming travel CUSTOMER NOTICE Service 121 Govan – Victoria Infirmary From Friday 7 November a revised timetable will operate on service 121 as a result of changes to the SPT tender. First Glasgow will continue to operate the service during the day Monday to Saturday. In the early morning, evening and all day Sundays another operator will run service 121. Please call Strathclyde Partnership for Transport on 0845 271 2405 for details of the service at these times. For further information visit www.firstgroup.com/glasgow or call Customer Services on 0141 423 6600 for more details.

It is beyond me why they couldn’t put all the information on the notice — we have just enough information to make a phone call or visit a website — hey, yeah, thanks for that guys!

Just in time for Christmas office parties, when people will be leaving their cars and relying on public transport!

Things are getting worse when routes are carved up like this anyway — everyone loses the plot.  Will the new operator be using the usual 121 bustops (the First Glasgow stops)? Will the timetable remain, or will it change for the better or worse?  What about fares?  Will bus passes, travel passes and cards still work?

What a mess — and we didn’t even see it coming (bit like the bus service itself)!

Scandalous: Council Secret Sell offs!

“DIRECT AND CARE” IS AN ANNOYING NAME FOR A COUNCIL DEPARTMENT BUT IT IS NO LONGER!

When I poked fun at “Direct and Care“ on this site, little did I know it really did have a bad name.  Not just that it was badly named, but that it was causing all sorts of financial trouble for the council.

I checked the City’s website this morning, and was surprised to see an entry dated a few days ago (31 October 2008 to be exact) regarding “Direct and Care”.

• www.glasgow.gov.uk/en/News/DirectCareLLP.htm

This is an amazing tale, and it demands your attention for a host of good reasons, not least of which is that almost no-one knows anything about what is going on!

Here’s the deal: “Direct and Care” grew to be one of the biggest council departments, with a staff of about 8000 civil servants.

Now, as you can imagine, all City councils are legally obliged — and committed — to meet financial targets set by the main government.

Back in June 2007, it was noticed that the so-called “Significant Trading Operations” (or “STOs”) of Glasgow’s “Direct and Care” department was in bad shape. Even their targets were to be met over a three year period, they were not on track to do this, they were heading for disaster!

So what to do?

The Executive Committee immediately asked for a “review” — they needed suggestions, ideas, and most of all, they needed answers — and fast.  They needed to get out of this hole — somehow.

So with Grant Thornton and Burness solicitors, a review of different options for getting out of trouble was produced.

The option that was decided upon was to privatise the department — something they had done before with “City Building”, “Culture and Sport Glasgow”, and “Glasgow Community and Safety Services”.  The council’s website puts it like this:

“Members of the Council’s Executive Committee today (Friday, 31 October 2008) approved a business plan to turn the department into the Council’s latest arm’s-length company…

The move means Direct and Care will have more opportunity to grow as a business by targeting the external market and should become more competitive in the longer term.”

Basically, there was no way this department was going to toe-the-line financially.  It was a huge money-pit.  There was no way the department would match the cheaper costs in the private sector — but they couldn’t just sack everyone, close down the department and put the workload out to competitive private tender. The City Leader, Steven Purcell said:

“If no action was taken by the Council it’s likely that we may have had to put these services out to competition, and winning contracts would be very difficult.”

Not one civil servant is made redundant, and the newly formed company will continue to provide the expensive and inefficient services we have come to expect — it’s just that because they are no longer aprt of the council, the targets are avoided and the council’s legal obligation evaporates!

Amusingly, the “business plan” produced as part of the review shows the new company becoming profitable in it’s FIRST year! It did not explain why it could not become profitable when run as a council department!

The company formed is a limited liability partnership, so if anything goes horribly wrong, the damage (liability) to the council will be limited — the council being in partnership with the private company — in that it provides work and money for the company but doesn’t take profits!

Things are getting worse when councils can do such significant things without asking the people who voted them into office and who pay for it all.

Things are getting worse when a loss-making department is turned into a loss-making company when the best way to serve the people would be to (a) run the departments better, or else (b) scrap everything and get quotes — the private companies quoting would obviously be unable to meet the sudden demand, so they would naturally have to employ experienced and qualified people — in other words, those who used to do the job for the council department.

This would separate the wheat from the chaff, and we’d get the best people for the best money, but no, we’ve got the wrost people for the worst money — and the government mechanism put in place to make councils more cost-effective has been by-passed.

Taxi “Enforcer”

TAXI AND PRIVATE HIRE ENFORCEMENT UNIT — YES, THAT’S WHAT IT SAYS ON THE VAN.

I saw a Glasgow City Council Taxi and Private Hire Enforcement Unit van today, and just had to take a photograph of it; no-one would believe me if I didn’t have evidence to back up the existence of this council-tax paid council department.

What on earth is going on with Glasgow City — are they all mad? If you can remember our post on the obscure department called “Direct and Care“, then it will come as no surprise that there exists a Taxi Enforcer!

Yes, things are getting worse! Oh, and enjoy the fireworks and bonfire at Glasgow Green tomorrow (everywhere else in the UK celebrations are tonight, but Glasgow is doing it tomorrow because Celtic and playing a game of football tonight in the city — maybe the council is touchy about celebrating the burning of a Roman Catholic [Guy Fawkes] on the night of a Celtic match)!

Speed Parking!

NO ONE LIKES SPEED BUMPS.

In an earlier post we explained why the council have used speed bumps (and things like extra traffic lights) to force drivers to use particular routes (such as the M77).

The Tantallon Road Traffic Calming Scheme (part of the M77 Corridor scheme) provided for speed humps because The Scottish Executive states “Road humps are the most effective traffic calming measure available for reducing speed. “

What can we say about a speed hump in a parking bay (double click on picture to enlarge).

Bizarre. Things are definitely getting worse when the council spend thousands of pounds of our council tax money on rubbish like this! I would dearly love to hear the official explanation of this silliness!

General Bigotry

BIGOTRY AND SECTARIANISM ARE EVERYWHERE STILL IN GLASGOW; IT’S JUST EVERYDAY BACKGROUND NOISE.

The newspaper board states:

“GERS PUT
GUARD ON
NOVO AFTER
NET BIGOTS’ THREAT”

Rangers, Celtic, Christian vs Christian. How sad indeed.  Things are getting worse when the bigotry can use new technology to scare a family.