Its not Logical , Jim.

[kerching]

Local council has just spent a fortune resurfacing all the pavements on the local industrial estate . Nobody uses the pavements as everybody drives in and drives out. The road leading to the estate has potholes thar Sir Ranulph Twistleton Wickham Fiennes regularly uses for pre Everest Practice. Have they filled these in?   Have they flip

 

[Andy™]

Local council has just spent a fortune resurfacing all the pavements on the local industrial estate . Nobody uses the pavements as everybody drives in and drives out. The road leading to the estate has potholes thar Sir Ranulph Twistleton Wickham Fiennes regularly uses for pre Everest Practice. Have they filled these in?   Have they flip

every year around late august / early september south tyneside council go on a pot hole filling spree, along with the odd bit resurfacing. limited to the route used by the great north run though. of course, they missed a few the other year and the local MP fell and broke her ankle...

 

[phil d]

every year around late august / early september south tyneside council go on a pot hole filling spree, along with the odd bit resurfacing. limited to the route used by the great north run though. of course, they missed a few the other year and the local MP fell and broke her ankle...

They did that near me a few years ago, they pitched up and resurfaced a length or road, replaced all the damaged bus shelters, fixed all the street lighting etc etc, it turned out that a high profile MP was visiting and they wanted to show him how well the area was doing. However a couple of streets away, the roads were that bad, you'd damage a 4x4 on them. I wished I'd have known earlier, I'd have staged an incident requiring him to divert onto a side road, then he'd have seen the "real" area.

 

[phil d]

it's not being greedy Duck, it's a measure of the level of underfunding by central government to local councils.........

A Cornish Council worked out the cost of clearing increased fly-tipping was far less than the expected increase in revenue, but you have to wonder if they factored in tipping dangerous waste, like asbestos, and old engine oil and the damage to our environment, plus personally, I hate seeing rubbish strewn all over the place.

Up at my mates farm, we had a problem with fly tippers, the local council came up with a cracking idea. To stop them tipping in our gateway, they sited a very obvious camera on a nearby pole, it stopped them alright, they stopped dumping there and started tipping in the next gateway, behind the camera!

If they'd have had any sense they'd use a covert camera, catch the people responsible, make sure they get huge fines, and get it in the paper as a warning to others.

 

[Sharpend]

Now you're expecting a proactive council, oh please really!!!

 

[binky]

they no longer have the staff to be pro-active, it's all just fire-fighting and counting pennies.

 

[Blue Duck]

I'm not entirely convinced, they claim poverty but I'm not sure. I feel the need to do some FOI's. 

 

[Sharpend]

councils have more money than they let on, our council lost over 7 million when the Icelandic banks collapsed a few years ago. This was money they had saved! 

 

[binky]

that was years ago, and they do have small contingency funds (think some of this is ex-council house sales that bthey weren't allowed to access). Austerity has mean't 30% reduction in funding with a further 20% to still be withdrawn by central government. My wife works for the council, so I know exactly how hard services have been hit. EG my bin collection has gone to fortnightly, bloddy stinks in this hot weather, and areas where rubbish has always been an issue are now totally disgusting, still the rats and seagulls are happy.

 

[steptoe]

The Icelandic crash wasn't that long ago, 

Bloody hell, the great war is still living memory for some,!!!!!

Bin collections, bin collections,!?!?!? 

Don't get me started, our bins get emptied on some random cycle you need to be a professor of bin emptying to understand, seems some sort of random every 3 weeks for our general rubbish bin, as for the other 3, glass/cans, garden waste, and paper, I think it depends if there is a sunny Thursday on the 17th of the month, :C

Myself and the 3 neighbours on our right have had to start doing a communal bin thing where we use each others bins, it's a fexkn joke, that's not funny, !!! 

 

[binky]

Iceland seems to be doing alright, quite a few banks their still, but I think the people refused to bail the banks out.

As for bins, I'm expecting the net result to be an outbreak of some terrible diseases. It's all short sighted in my opinion, bit like cheaper cladding on tower blocks.....it will come back to bite us all. Not that I like paying tax, but I would rather do that than have ****e services. I've just come back from France, the roads were a revelation, not a pot hole anywhere and I was staying in a little country village in Brittany well off the beaten track.

 

[steptoe]

Iceland seems to be doing alright, quite a few banks their still, but I think the people refused to bail the banks out.

As for bins, I'm expecting the net result to be an outbreak of some terrible diseases. It's all short sighted in my opinion, bit like cheaper cladding on tower blocks.....it will come back to bite us all. Not that I like paying tax, but I would rather do that than have ****e services. I've just come back from France, the roads were a revelation, not a pot hole anywhere and I was staying in a little country village in Brittany well off the beaten track.

Ahhhhh dont tell the Brittans you were in France, that's like staying in Swansea and saying you were in England,!!!!

Its totally different,

And don't even get me started about where you stay in Londonderry/Derry , nevermind whether you were even in Ireland or not,,,,,,  @rapparee :slap

 

[phil d]

I'm totally amazed at how stupid some of these councils are, about 5 years ago, they put speed humps on all the roads on our estate, then they had to remove them on one, it was a bus route! The next thing they decide on that one street to install chicanes, they spend a fortune on cast iron bollards, a few months later some H&S bod says the cast iron bollards are a hazard, suppose someone hits one with a car, they may get hurt!

Out come the bollards, the next thing they are planting trees where the bollards were, now excuse me, but those saplings will, in 5 or 10 years be big hefty trees, and we've all seen what hitting a tree does to a car.

A few weeks later I receive a letter off the council, could they interest me in a tree for my front garden? I rang them up, no I would not be interested in a tree in my front garden, I would however be very interested in having the road repaired outside my house. Sorry, we don't have any funds for that, says the man at the council!

At this point I go into full "Meldrew mode", how the hell can they not have money to repair a road, yet they have money to plant sodding trees!

The speed humps on the estate opposite were unreal, they were massive, one day a hearse got stuck on one! the coffin was in the back and about 5 cars of mourners behind it, they had to call out a recovery truck to lift it off, the council said it was fine, it was only when a police car removed half it's undercarriage that the humps were lowered.

 

[Lurch]

There's a street round here that is the main bus route. Narrow road, twists in the middle, difficult junctions at both ends, cars parked both sides, and across the junctions, and speed bumps all the way down.

The council amaze me.

 

[binky]

At this point I go into full "Meldrew mode", how the hell can they not have money to repair a road, yet they have money to plant sodding trees!

EU funded projects / government directives, councils get told to spend money on xyz when they really need money for abc. By 2020 all local governments will be self-funding, ie all money spent wil be raised through council tax only. Your taxes are about to shoot up!

 

[rapparee]

And don't even get me started about where you stay in Londonderry/Derry , nevermind whether you were even in Ireland or not,,,,,,  @rapparee :slap

You went to Ireland and visited Derry.

Our council has its own agenda, to hell with the bins.

http://www.newsletter.co.uk/news/irish-road-signs-being-imposed-on-unionist-areas-1-7855201

 

[Evans Electric]

Councils amaze me , theres always some empire builder with outlandish ideas that we all have to pay for . 

There was a public outcry in here years ago when the council announced they were having this big important meeting  and it was being held in Hawaii toforge connections with them or something.

Now what is there in common ?   One is a dirty old , overcrowded,  ex-industrial giant traffic jam full of immigrants & people who talk funny ....while Birmingham basks in temperate climes , the Pacific Ocean washes gently onto her shores , palm trees wave and the people sit at beachside bars at the glorious sunsets  where time has little meaning and sunrise will again reveal the sparkling sands , the clear blue ocean and another azure sky .

 

[binky]

don't hear much of the 'twinning' program these days. Such trips were more about local councillors than the councils themselves, but there certainly isn't any budgets for such things these days. Councils do also have some impetus to try and improve trade / promote business, such as the lighting projects I posted on here 2 years ago. If a project can be shown to be self financing, within 5 years, they can borrow money at 0% from central government.

Trouble with the self-financing of councils by 2020 is that this will hit poorest areas hardest, along with countryside councils. Areas with reasonable economies and high population densities ie lots of people to pay council tax should fair OKish, but still with a 50% cut in funding, guess who's going to fill the financial hole????? I don't feel sorry for the countryside as they keep voting Tory :innocent