So David Cameron fell over himself to congratulate Birmingham City Council for firing 2,000 Council workers while in Edgbaston constituency yesterday. Tough decisions, tough economic times, blah, blah, blah. The reality though is far more disturbing. Quite simply, Birmingham City Council is in absolute financial chaos.
Over the last few weeks it has emerged that:
- The District Auditor failed to sign off accounts because they were “strewn with errors.”
- Council debt for this financial year leapt from the official figure presented to the January Cabinet of £11.6 million to £34 million later in the month.
- Invoices from suppliers of goods were overpaid with some companies benefiting from being double-counted on an electronic payments system.
So the reason 2,000 people have been fired, hitting the regional economy when it least needs it, is Tory incompetence. It’s not that they’ve decided to rein in spending to be cost effective. It’s that they’ve lost control of spending.
What’s worse, 75% of a pot of a £155 million pot of money given by the Government to get people back to work has been left unspent. All of this is while hundreds of millions of pounds have been spent on consultants and agency staff. This inept Council are adding 1000s of people to the dole queues and hitting Birmingham’s economy at precisely the wrong time.
And yet David Cameron blithely tolerates this….
February 18th, 2010 at 09:26
Let’s not lose sight that Birmingham is a Tory Lib Dem administered authority and as “the Government’s most trenchant economic critic” I don’t hear him shouting too loudly about the loss of 2,000 jobs in Birmingham. That must be the best part of a car factory his Lid Dem chums are closing down.
Anthony did I not see you down in London on Valentine ’s Day next to Labour HQ, I thought you was on the Long list for Erdington, what happened to you?
February 18th, 2010 at 13:18
Good point about the Lib Dems and thank you for your comment Mike.
I was on the longlist and I’m not on the shortlist. I wish all the shortlisted candidates the very best of luck in the selection and, of course, the election afterwards.