“A friend of mine has lost his job at RBS a month or so back. Has to sign on every other week, but is not unemployed as long as he proves that he is looking for work. He has to ‘work’ 16 hrs a week looking for work to get his NI paid. But he’s not unemployed; he’s just not working.”
Comment at:
https://www.theguardian.com/business/2018/may/18/ikea-halts-new-preston-store-as-uk-profits-fall
In a story about how the Ecuadorian embassy turned from offering Julian Assange (of Wikileaks notoriety) asylum to spying on him, using a flat close to the embassy set up for the task there is an interesting passing reference to our MP:
“… Every month, the security company sent a confidential list of Assange’s visitors to the Ecuadorian president. There were additional “extraordinary” reports. Sometimes, the company included stills from secret video footage of interesting guests, plus profiles and analysis. They also reported when a packet of sweets was lobbed on to the balcony, seemingly a present for Assange.
It is these visitor logs that will interest [Robert] Mueller [investigating connections between Trump, Assange and Russia]. He is reportedly close to indicting Russian hackers allegedly behind the raid on the Democrats’ electronic servers and seems to view WikiLeaks as an integral part of the Kremlin’s multifaceted espionage operation. The FBI has interviewed at least one source close to Operation Guest, it is understood.The external surveillance team wrote up descriptions of these encounters. They were sent back to Senain and Correa, sources say. The then Ecuadorian foreign minister, Ricardo Patiño, visited Assange in London, talking with him into the early hours, and criticised Britain for failing to find a solution to the standoff. The UK was unmoved.
Asked what the government planned to do about Assange, the then foreign minister, Hugo Swire, said: “Not my stone, not my shoe.” …”
DCC Leader John Hart said on Spotlight this evening, that the reason Devon isn’t going for unitisation is that the government usually insists on 0.5m population for a unitary council and so Devon would need 2 unitary councils and, whichever way you cut it, that would result in one rich council and one poor council. (Presumably he means a north/south divide or east/west).
(No worries, Mr Hart, ALL councilswill be very poor, very soon!)
BUT WAIT! Isn’t “Greater Exeter” coming in close to 500,000 population?
Exeter – approx 120,000
Mid Devon – approx 80,000
Teignbridge – approx 125,000
East Devon – approx 140,000
YES – it is big enough to be unitary and is developing an over-arching “Strategic Plan”.
Are we getting a “Greater Exeter” unitary council by stealth?
Owl says: “Hissing” in the wind! Our unelected and unaccountable Local Enterprise Partnership now controls the vast amount of money in both counties!
“A Tory-controlled local authority has called on ministers to fix a “broken” system of council funding after it emerged its deteriorating finances mean it is at serious risk of going bust.
Somerset county council has been told that large overspends on children’s social services, coupled with reduced government funding and the erosion of its reserves, have left its finances “in a very challenging position”.
A formal peer review says any failure to meet its ambitious financial savings targets for the current year would leave the council at risk of being unable to set a balanced budget within months – in effect leaving it at risk of insolvency.
The county, which has already announced unpopular plans to close two-thirds of its Sure Start children’s centres, more than half of its libraries and make big reductions to its learning disability services, must now find further cuts.
There has been heightened concern over the sustainability of local authority finances since Northamptonshire county council declared effective bankruptcy in February. It was subsequently taken over by government commissioners.
A spokesperson for Somerset county council said: “There are clearly pressures on our budgets, as there is on local authority budgets up and down the country as government funding falls and demand grows.
“The recent peer review report found many positives and areas of success. It also concluded that we understand the financial challenges we face and that we can meet them.
“We believe the system by which local government is funded is broken and call on the government to address this as a priority as part of its fair funding review [of local government finance].”
Somerset says it is confident that it will not follow Northamptonshire into insolvency. Despite serious challenges – including a target of £17m in cuts for children’s social care this year – it says it is committed to meeting savings targets.
But the review makes it clear that the county has struggled to deliver planned savings for two years, and has been reliant on reserves to patch up its budgets. “For the last two years only 65% of agreed savings have been delivered and whilst there may be specific reasons for this, this level of delivery is simply unsustainable in the future.”
Somerset, which has an annual budget of around £316m, has made around £130m of savings since 2010. It believes the forthcoming green paper into social care funding and the fair funding review hold the key to its survival.
The National Audit Office warned this year that several councils were using up “rainy day” reserves to prop up services. It estimated up to 15 councils are at risk of going bust when their reserves are exhausted.
Jane Lock, the leader of Somerset’s opposition Liberal Democrat group, blamed the council’s predicament on its decision to freeze council tax for six years after 2010, despite swingeing national cuts in funding, and at a time when austerity measures were increasing demand on services.
She said: “The reason Somerset has got to here is quite simply the political ideology that they would refuse to put up council tax. That’s left a £26m hole in the budget.”
Simon Edwards, the director of the County Councils Network, said: “County authorities face a toxic cocktail of having rising demand for services, being the lowest funded upper-tier councils, and the impact of having the sharpest reductions in government funding by the end of the decade.”
He added: “With demand continuing to rise amid funding reductions, the reality is that councils of all sizes and colours will face similar situations in the future, unless a sustainable solution is found by government.”
“Dame Judith Hackitt proved yesterday that appointing ‘independent’ experts is no guarantee that difficult policy areas can be somehow magically be set free from politics. She started off badly yesterday and it was downhill all the way afterwards. On the Today programme she struggled to explain why her review had failed to recommend an outright ban on combustible cladding. That was followed by an almost comical U-turn, saying that perhaps she should have recommended a ban. Then Housing Secretary James Brokenshire announced he would consult on a ban. It was not a coincidence that the panicked responses came after David Lammy, who has a moral authority ministers cannot ignore these days, declared the review a ‘whitewash’.
But things looked even worse later, when she told reporters “I am not an expert on Grenfell” and “has not looked into the details” of the fire that killed 71 people. With a Whitehallese worthy of Sir Humphrey Appleby, she declared her review was instead “triggered by the discovery that there were many other buildings that were not safe”. That’s true, but to say also that “my review was not triggered by the tragedy at Grenfell” was just plain daft.
On Question Time last night housing minister Dominic Raab said: “I’m sorry it’s taken so long” [to respond to Grenfell]. Meanwhile, a new report says four million homes are needed to solve the UK’s ‘epic’ housing crisis. Brokenshire needs to get a handle on his new brief rather quickly.”
Source: Huffington Post
” The parliamentary select committee report pulls no punches in blaming the greed of the Carillion executives, who gouged out millions from the business up to the moment of collapse, with £1.5bn owed to creditors and £0.5bn to the pension fund (Carillion fall blamed on hubris and greed, 16 May). The wider issue, for all financial institutions, is the greed of the “big four” auditors, paid £72m, who colluded with the directors, gave no warnings and signed clean certificates. Surely the executives and auditors should pay all the creditors in full. At what point does the “cosy relationship” become a criminal fraudulent conspiracy? As Polly Toynbee argues, the people want their money back from the fat cats, not slippery apologies. Are the supine regulators part of the conspiracy or will they bring charges?
Noel Hodson
Tax Reconciliations, Oxford
• We in the west criticise Putin’s Russia as a “kleptocracy”, but the damning report into the collapse of Carillion shows that something similar exists in too many of the boardrooms of British companies. Time and again we read reports of chief executives and their boardroom cronies, to quote Frank Field, “stuffing their mouths with gold”, while their companies go to rack and ruin with thousands thrown out of work and pension schemes impoverished. There is a word for people who appropriate other people’s money: “thief”. If boardroom larcenists can steer clear of the law and go unpunished, it is surely time that the law was changed.
Ron Mitchell
Coventry
• A simple solution is to ban the auditors of all public companies from undertaking any consultancy or other non-audit work. We need specialist audit firms and totally separate consultancy organisations so that audit opinions are not influenced by potential consultancy fees.
Jim Michie
Chester
The government’s culpability and responsibility for the collapse of Carillion and its consequences is broader and deeper than your article and the select committee’s report suggest: the government’s insistence that its estate be constructed and managed through prime contract procurement strategies increases the risk of prime contractor default and its disastrous consequences, as well as increasing the cost of everything it purchases. There was a time when local builders or suppliers would deal direct with their local government client: now we must go through a pyramid of consultancies, all adding 20% and “retaining” 10%.
Michael Heaton
Warminster, Wiltshire
• If a benefits claimant makes a fraudulent claim they may end up in court for their abuse of public funds. When I read about the way in which public money has been handled by Carillion, I find myself wondering when we can expect the court appearances of the directors and their accountants.
Stephen Decker
Chelmsford, Essex”
https://www.theguardian.com/business/2018/may/17/carillion-and-britains-modern-kleptocracy
East Devon Watch 