British Standard! Paid for with your council tax!

[arbogrunt]

the contractors doing our local Council contract are turning out some of the best street-tree pruning I've seen in 19 years. Its a shame to see some other LA's just pollarding the living daylights out of everything with a leaf on it to fit into their cropped budgets...standards drop with the price I guess

[Pete Mctree]

Their finances are fine, it's the protectionist way they are spent which is the problem. LA's are cutting frontline services over back office bureacracy & senior / middle management in an attempt to shift blame for their failings from local to central government. This presumably makes central government look bad, they get voted out, Labour back in, public sector saved. And we suffer, everything from weekly recycling collections going to fortnightly to roads not being repaired to schools getting reduced funding.

LA's & their employees' trade unions are a real problem in my view

 

Wow!!! Hard words indeed

Your impressions are more from 1993 than 2013 & it sounds like you still have a pic of maggie thatcher on your bedroom wall to jerk off over

In this age of cuts & austerity it is about best value - we in LaLa land work, on a whole bloody hard. We get no thanks, provide emergency cover 365 days a year, spend a massive amount of time listening to those who demand our work, less working for those who deserve or need it, dragging brash through dog crap a used nappies on glamorous estates & being scorned by those who can always do better.

Right I'm gonna listen to some Billy Bragg & doze off after reading socialist worker