Owl will not be passing on Leader Diviani’s full-blown Christmas message, just the most choice ten phrases from it so you can add your own comments.
And this is the picture that the Communications Department chose to go with the press release, just in case anyone has forgotten what he looks like:
1. Relocation and evolution of efficient, innovative services remains a priority for district council …
2. Improving and we will continue to improve …
3. We will continue to face financial pressures …
4. How we can deliver our services in new and innovative ways.
5. We must evolve from being service providers and instead become enablers …
6. Support communities to come together so they can do more for themselves …
7. We will also be focusing on a more commercial approach to delivering our services …
8. We must deliver the £2.6m savings that central government require us to make …
9. Outstanding council, which works together with local people to create great value services and an outstanding community, economy and environment for East Devon, both now and for future generations.
10. Everything we do is aimed at making East Devon a place where people want to live and work, as well as a top destination for visitors.
East Devon Watch 
Great teeth!!!!
1. Are they saying that they are staid and inefficient now then?
2. Evidence to show they are already improving?
3. Well – if they had not kept Council tax the same for 5 years in a mistaken expectation that the New Homes Bribe … ooops … Bonus would continue forever, then they might not have such great financial pressured today. And if they hadn’t wasted £1.7m of OUR money so far in a relocation which no longer has a business case that stacks up (even assuming it ever had one), then they would not be facing such bad financial pressures either.
4. Repeat of 1. I guess his Trite Phrase Generator had a hiccup.
5. This sounds like outsourcing to me. That would be a VERY bad step indeed. I have yet to see any outsourcing / privatisation which was a good deal in the long run.
6. The Div has done a GREAT job of bringing the Exmouth and Seaton and Sidmouth Communities together, but generally they have come together to fight what EDDC is doing not support it. OWN GOAL!!!
7. More commercial = get local people to pay far, far , far more. Since when has the council been a commercial organisation – I thought they were there to SERVE LOCAL PEOPLE.
8. This may be true – but a decent council leader would be fighting it and arguing with the government of the day – unfortunately EDDC is run by Tories and they would never be disloyal to the Tory party by fighting a Tory government. (Of course, their loyalty should be to US, the local citizens, and not Theresa May!!)
9. Evidence of being Outstanding please. Certainly there is a lot of evidence to suggest that quite a number of people think that are NOT outstanding, but The Div prefers to pretend that doesn’t exist.
10. What a whopper!!! How does leaving Seaton without a hotel help tourism? Or destroying Exmouth’s sea-front attraction? And how does building all over the countryside help make people want to live here? Or ignoring and riding roughshod over clearly stated local wishes – like ignoring the Exmouth Town Survey or failing to undertake meaningful consultations?
Nope – this is just a typical bovine excrement set of sound-bites from a council leader more concerned with his own ego than what the local population actually want!!
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