Thursday July 24

Blogs

6.00pm, Campaign
Mark Wallace:
SATS chaos rumbles on

The really worrying thing is this: even if we punish those responsible for this case, the underlying conditions that produced this failure will persist across the public sector. Too many bad contracts are signed on our behalf by people who lack the experiece to negotiate them properly, who are relatively safe in the knowledge that they are near-impossible to hold to account if it does go wrong, and if they do lose their jobs then they will get a great big golden parachute, funded by the taxpayer. Unless we make fundamental changes, this will happen again - maybe not in schools, perhaps in the army or in hospitals - but it will happen again... - Read More

5.00pm, Campaign
Matthew Sinclair:
Councils finding spurious reasons to avoid answering Freedom of Information requests

Don't let council officials get away with refusing to respect your right to know.  Get in touch with the leader of Rother council and let him know what they've been up to, and that you aren't impressed! - Read More

3.30pm, Burning Our Money
Mike Denham:
Welfare Reform

Purnell has certainly moved in the right direction (and has got the headlines to prove it). But the details are still flakey, and what he's not done is to copy the highly successful US innovations in time limiting benefits. Yesterday a BBC reporter opined that was because UK public opinion is softer than US public opinion, and we would never condone such harsh measures.

To which we say, it's never been offered... - Read More

10.00am, Campaign
Tim Aker:
What is a councillor worth?

Finally, as I noted last week, councillors have very little power to overturn or even check decisions made by officers.  That officers at Thurrock Council could arbitrarily employ more staff for the public payroll, despite the objections of the elected councillors, shows that the current diffusion of authority in Town Halls leaves councillors with little power to shape their boroughs...

A democratic deficit is oft mentioned when discussing the value we get from MEPs and MPs.  It’s time we started looking at the scandal going on right under our noses: an elected position, powerless, yet continuously voting for higher and higher salaries costing the council tax payers hundreds of thousands of pounds a year... - Read More

Daily Telegraph, New Rock chief lured from Barclays with £2.6m-plus deal
Daily Star, Crisis? MPs are off for 11 weeks
Guardian, Banking: New Northern Rock chief walks into bonus row
Daily Mail, New boss of Northern Rock to become highest paid worker in the public sector
Daily Telegraph, Thirteen million drivers to pay higher road taxes
Mirror, Your Money: £2m for new boss of Rock
Oxford Mail, Tories come clean on expenses
Birmingham Mail, Fears Birmingham families are paying too much Council Tax
Abingdon Herald, Tories publish expense claims
Bristol Evening Post, Outrage at quango's £1m PR bill for South West taxpayers

Comments

[sitondafence]

This mornings news .. Police are determined to recover "every penny" of the money defrauded by John and Anne Darwin in their canoe death scam. And as criminals so they should but why are corrupt politicians let off Scott free? Is it one law for them and another law for us?