Council faces extra £8m worth of cuts (From The Bolton News)

Cliff Morris should feel at home in these circumstances, a downward spiral encountered by every public body with which he is associated. And yet he never feels any of the pain.

Scrap the free drinks after council meetings, we don’t need all the Christmas lights, and the Christmas trees around the town, and the expensive Christmas lights turn on gig. Also stop paying 13.2 million (information discovered by freedom of information request from GMPTE) to run empty late night buses.

£48,000,000 bus station we don't need. Dublin has a great public transport system and no bus station. the busses drive around their route all day and people get on and off at bus stops.
A bus parked in a bus station is not earning money or providing a service. How many tens of thousands it the widening of Blackhorse street costing? Why? The width of the street isn't a problem, but the phasing of the traffic lights for vehicles turning right onto blackhorse street is.

Sean Harriss on 4 grand a week talking about significant savings, job losses and cuts. Lord help us all.
Happy Christmas Sean!!

Bendix wrote:
Cliff Morris should feel at home in these circumstances, a downward spiral encountered by every public body with which he is associated. And yet he never feels any of the pain.

Mr Morris has had few triumphs of late. Has anyone noticed the seesaw effect twixt local govenment and national govenment? When it's a labour controlled council and a (Coalition govenment) the council do all in their power to make the govenment look like poop.
Instead of taking a long hard look at where savings could be sensibly made ie, Fat cat saleries, travel allowances free lunches, huge pensions, computer specialists companies costing tens of thousands of pounds, writing programs that don't work I could go on. They always choose instead to threaten the young and the vunerable and sick in our community. Shame on them.

Well that sorts that then there goes the 6Million they were planning to spend on the Town Hall if they don't spend that then there will be no need for much extra spending cuts then!!!
if they also cut down on the repeated mail we get to each house it would save a fortune I had 4 identical letters last week from the same department
about same subject just signed by different people, this tells me too many people work in that dept doing the same job and not recording their work efficiently If bolton council and many other councils got their own houses in order first then I am sure the cuts would not be as savage

Question, how many people work at Bolton metro? Answer, about half of them.

Andy Higham wrote:
£48,000,000 bus station we don't need. Dublin has a great public transport system and no bus station. the busses drive around their route all day and people get on and off at bus stops.
A bus parked in a bus station is not earning money or providing a service. How many tens of thousands it the widening of Blackhorse street costing? Why? The width of the street isn't a problem, but the phasing of the traffic lights for vehicles turning right onto blackhorse street is.

It's not money from Bolton Council that will be used for the much needed new bus station. That will come from Transport for Greater Manchester!

heaton watcher wrote:

Andy Higham wrote:
£48,000,000 bus station we don't need. Dublin has a great public transport system and no bus station. the busses drive around their route all day and people get on and off at bus stops.
A bus parked in a bus station is not earning money or providing a service. How many tens of thousands it the widening of Blackhorse street costing? Why? The width of the street isn't a problem, but the phasing of the traffic lights for vehicles turning right onto blackhorse street is.

It's not money from Bolton Council that will be used for the much needed new bus station. That will come from Transport for Greater Manchester!

To which there will be a significant wedge coughed up by BMBC on other related things plus I'd expect the amount we pay to GMC to increase to cover the costs.
Nowt's free and just how many folk will benefit from this 'much needed' bus station? enogh to justify it's cost? I doubt it!

Will someone enlighten me please, what will a £48,000,000 bus station do that a bus stop at the side of the road won't?

Huge savings to be made ,OK lets put an end to the index linked pensions,to which public sector employees contribute on average about 30% of the amount they eventually receive.The rest made up by those in productive,usefull wealth creating employment, whose private pensions (if they have one) cannot begin to compare with the public sector.

Let's not forget that public sector "workers" are net recipients of taxpayers' money, are overpaid, enjoy excessive pension benefits and have sickness levels way in excess of those in the private sector. In short public sector employment costs are a rip-off.

Bus stations are a bit like Libraries... used by a vocal minority.

I was against the Library closures until i though about it and realised that I had not used Bolton's Library's for over 10 years.

Two points:

1. Greater Manchester councils are going to have to get used to sharing delivery of services to save backroom costs - it's working in London (Tri-Borough project), and

2. The latest CIPFA stats for libraries make interesting reading with regard to support service costs (backroom not front line).

Support service costs per 1,000 population 2011/12:

Bolton - £3,262

Bury - £2,070

Wigan - £2,282

You can bet this sort of spending pattern is replicated in other service areas

So, why is Bolton spending about half as much again as its neighbours on the back room? The public want to see expenditure concentrated the front line.

Bolton News - do your job and investigate.

This is a problem because our two biggest budgets are children and adults and we’ll have to look at making cuts to those.”

...what a strange statement ...well yes children and adults ... that covers just about everyone ..

Tories out in force on this one. Scrabbling around looking for someone else to blame.

The fact is that this uncaring ,look after the rich, screw the poor, government are again cutting the amount of cash available to councils. Cash needed to provide the services we all need.
It's an easy target. If the services are poor, blame the council, they should all get pay cuts anyway.

I see the new governor of the Bank of England (appointed by top Tory George Osbourne) will see his salary increased 300% to £900,000. For doing what exactly?

Am I being naive when I find that most of the services provided by the council are now out sourced and returning a profit? The bins, leisure centres etc are all run by profit generating companies. If firms such as Viridian and G4S can make a profit why can't the over paid officials in the town hall do it for us? They are paid good money for managing. Any literate person can pick up a phone and get a price for the job. Roll on the day when we go back to returning the profits back to the rate payers, but this would involve some brain power and supervision. Or maybe the contractors return a profit by not offering the same terms and conditions as the town hall staff get. But if the electorate continue to pass by on the other side we will still get the councilors we deserve.

So the answer is to let the private sector run everything,
Well it's heading that way with this 'Make the rich richer' ConDem government.

Maggie started it with the selling off of the utilities.
Look what's happened to your bills. Water, gas, electric, trains and buses.

If Bolton council was a private company how many times more would Sean Harris' pay be? 5, 10 ?

If council workers are getting a living wage and a pension to supplement their OAP what's wrong with that.
Why do Tory working class people want to see others live in poverty whilst turning a blind eye to the excesses of the super rich tax avoiders?

irwell1 wrote:
Sean Harriss on 4 grand a week talking about significant savings, job losses and cuts. Lord help us all.
Happy Christmas Sean!!

plus final salary pension. Would struggle to gain level this in the private sector.

hatonfire wrote:
So the answer is to let the private sector run everything,
Well it's heading that way with this 'Make the rich richer' ConDem government.

Maggie started it with the selling off of the utilities.
Look what's happened to your bills. Water, gas, electric, trains and buses.

If Bolton council was a private company how many times more would Sean Harris' pay be? 5, 10 ?

If council workers are getting a living wage and a pension to supplement their OAP what's wrong with that.
Why do Tory working class people want to see others live in poverty whilst turning a blind eye to the excesses of the super rich tax avoiders?

Why do Tory working class people want to see others live in poverty


They don't, they just want quite a few of them to realise they should not expect owt for nowt!

Bolton council is the biggest employer in town. There will not be one single employee who gets paid for doing no work.

Why you and a few other's on here attack working people and defend and vote for the rich toffs is beyond me. Don't you know they laugh at you behind your backs.

Ahh Bolton's finest commentators. And now the facts. White collar workers at the town hall are paid less than private industry, their pension is comparable (no more) than private industry, their travel allowances are far less and other perks are non-existent. Sick leave however is very poor and should be addressed. Out sourcing to private companies inevitably costs more in the long run, no ifs no buts. I know from years of experience in working for both public and private sector. If the glorious commentators above spent as much time identifying benefit cheats and people claiming discounts for Council Tax that they shouldn't receive then perhaps the Council may be in a better state.

sunfun wrote:
Scrap the free drinks after council meetings, we don’t need all the Christmas lights, and the Christmas trees around the town, and the expensive Christmas lights turn on gig. Also stop paying 13.2 million (information discovered by freedom of information request from GMPTE) to run empty late night buses.

Sunfun this is what we need, more freedom of information act discoveries of what is being spent/wasted on what and how it is impacting upon us ordinary folks in Bolton. if you look at who is on what board of Governors or what group/exec/steering group in Bolton you will see the same old names popping up again and again.All the establishments apparently being /mismanaged and doing badly.Look at whose who are on the board of the Royal Bolton hospital, the University of Bolton, Bolton school ,Bolton sixth form college, Bolton college etc. Who is on all of these 'failing' establishments wasting our public money, whilst making staff redundant ??? Name names.
There should be some sort of Union and local councillors/Boltn people groundswell/action to uncover the truth about the wasteful spending and hospitality bills,event spending and honorariums, whilst ordinary people suffer the consequences.
The Truth will out indeed.

hatonfire wrote:
Bolton council is the biggest employer in town. There will not be one single employee who gets paid for doing no work. Why you and a few other's on here attack working people and defend and vote for the rich toffs is beyond me. Don't you know they laugh at you behind your backs.

in fact the majority of the public sector front line workers, nurses, mental health workers, social workers, library workers, admin etc at the university... all those folks in front line/front facing roles, are not paid a great deal , work their socks off to support the publics needs, helping folks in their hour of need.These workers pay a decent percentage into their pensions. It's the over powerful bods at the top of the Hospital, libraries, The University, council etc who take huge pay increases
( whilst denying the workers a pay rise)and huge pensions.I would think, they will all no doubt ,be, behind the scenes in the last few weeks, topping up their pensions to get the biggest pensions pay off they can, as they know their days are numbered.The people at the top are empowered to ruin/run down the organisations they purport to Manage. The Bolton news does not appear to investigate anything untoward or of real concern to the Bolton public.It mainly gives out empty 'good news stories' it seems, though I could be wrong. Anyway, If you want an investigation on anything, write to a real newspaper with your concerns, or write to 'Private eye'... a friend pointed out a good article recently about The University of Bolton and its decline. Maybe they will do one on the Hospital and the Council too ?

hoboh2o wrote:

hatonfire wrote:
So the answer is to let the private sector run everything,
Well it's heading that way with this 'Make the rich richer' ConDem government.

Maggie started it with the selling off of the utilities.
Look what's happened to your bills. Water, gas, electric, trains and buses.

If Bolton council was a private company how many times more would Sean Harris' pay be? 5, 10 ?

If council workers are getting a living wage and a pension to supplement their OAP what's wrong with that.
Why do Tory working class people want to see others live in poverty whilst turning a blind eye to the excesses of the super rich tax avoiders?

Why do Tory working class people want to see others live in poverty


They don't, they just want quite a few of them to realise they should not expect owt for nowt!

Tory Working Class people - what is wrong with that sentence - garlic bread anyone?

aardwolf wrote:
Ahh Bolton's finest commentators. And now the facts. White collar workers at the town hall are paid less than private industry, their pension is comparable (no more) than private industry, their travel allowances are far less and other perks are non-existent. Sick leave however is very poor and should be addressed. Out sourcing to private companies inevitably costs more in the long run, no ifs no buts. I know from years of experience in working for both public and private sector. If the glorious commentators above spent as much time identifying benefit cheats and people claiming discounts for Council Tax that they shouldn't receive then perhaps the Council may be in a better state.

Seems your time in the public sector was slightly blinkered. I too have worked for both so go on tell me how many deputy heads of various departments with their deputies and assistants did you have the pleasure of meeting? It seems only now are they realising they don't actually need all these posts.

'Only the little people pay taxes," the late American corporate tax evader Leona Helmsley famously declared. That's certainly the spirit of David Cameron and George Osborne's Britain. Five years into the crisis, the British economy has just edged out of its third downturn, but construction is still reeling from government cuts and most people's living standards are falling.

Those at the sharp end are being hit hardest: from cuts to disability and housing benefits, tax credits and the educational maintenance allowance and now increases in council tax while NHS waiting lists are lengthening, food banks are mushrooming across the country and charities report sharp increases in the number of children going hungry. All this to pay for the collapse in corporate investment and tax revenues triggered by the greatest crash since the 30s.

At the other end of the spectrum though, things are going swimmingly. The richest 1,000 people in Britain have seen their wealth increase by £155bn since the crisis began – more than enough to pay off the whole government deficit of £119bn at a stroke. Anyone earning over £1m a year can look forward to a £42,000 tax cut in the spring, while firms have been rewarded with a 2% cut in corporation tax to 24%.
Copied from the Guardian.

atlas123 wrote:
Bus stations are a bit like Libraries... used by a vocal minority.

I was against the Library closures until i though about it and realised that I had not used Bolton's Library's for over 10 years.

A pity - more reading might have improved your understanding of the apostrophe.