Too much council bureaucracy spoils a fine county

Published 27 Jan 2012 09:30

ON THE borders somewhere there are probably still one or two rusting signs welcoming travellers to the Royal County of Berkshire.

Particularly confusing, one imagines, for an alien desirous of being taken to our leader. Try explaining to one of them that Berkshire doesn't exist. Funnily enough the Berkshire County in Massachusetts doesn't exist either, except for similar purely ceremonial reasons, but apparently it does have more signs.

As a business model, ours stinks. A population of fewer than a million administered by six unitary councils, with six chief executives (5½ with Reading's Michael Coughlin getting the heave ho), six social services directors, six education directors, six highways directors, six logos. Well, you get the idea.

Also worth noting is that several of those senior worthies earn more than the Prime Minister. Now I bow to no-one in my opinion that Dave's a plank, but one way and another we're all responsible for putting him in charge. So we should count our blessings that he's thus far resisted the temptation to withdraw his labour (or whatever he believes in this week) in protest at such gross inequality. And despite all that 'being in it together' tosh there are quite a few representatives of the elected councillor variety able to afford to give up the day job and live on their 'allowances'. But then I guess it's a kind of work experience before boarding the Parliamentary gravy train.

Mind you the collective sound of tightening belts has certainly brought a few encouraging overtures between neighbouring unitaries. Trading standards and legal departments merging, sharing waste disposal, environmental health, and a carers' advice service.

Persuading turkeys to vote for Christmas might be a less challenging prospect, but d'you see where I'm coming from? Unless there's some law that says no man can put together what Michael Heseltine, that master of failed ambition, tore asunder when he dropped the legislative equivalent of a bomb on us in 1998, just think how many cuts we could restore with five layers sliced off the admin bill.

And hey, we could even call it Berkshire County Council.

BEARING in mind Thames Water's flair for public relations cock-ups, anyone celebrating the 8.6% stake in the company taken by China Investment Corporation might nervously ponder that the building of Three Gorges Dam on the Yangtze river displaced 1.2 million inhabitants and destroyed 13 cities, 140 towns and 1,350 villages.

Tweet

Return to the main index, get more from this section or browse our Opinion archives.

Follow @rdgchronicle