Council budget cuts

[turningright]

papa stour, i was suggest you lay off the glue sniffing a little

[engineer21]

haha i do love 27! but shame papa expects all the gritter, ferry, quarry, garage etc and other council workers who start well before 9am to be late.

 

the only way the concil will save money is to stop providing such good services

 

why is there such a demand for social care? is this just care or elderly/disabled?

 

mabye sports centres will have to close 2 days a week or lose a cpl of them, close schools or reduce teachers, dont maintain the roads, cancel some ferry sailings. none of it will be popular no matter what they do.

 

p.s its very wrong that social care workers get paid more than nhs staff (who also work very unsociable hours with mostly even more unsociable patients!!!) it should be similar wages dependant upon qualifications

[JGHR]

the only way the concil will save money is to stop providing such good services

 

 

I agree service level must be reduced or in some cases removed altogether, here's my list of austerity measures

 

Get rid of the essy kerts and community skips and close down rova head dump/ recycling centre. Open up all the local dumps again(Vidlin Bixter Watlee, wherever else they were) and permit folk to dump stuff ower the banks like we used to do. There is no better sunday afternoon oot for a young boy than hockin among all the bruck at the dump.

 

Sport and Leisure Department? Shut it down, the PT teachers can surely manage that.

 

I have no idea if bairns at the school get a menu to choose their denner frae, but if they do, get rid of it. Why do they need a choice? One main course of totties and meat, and some kind of pudding with custard should be perfectly sufficient.

 

Stop sending the ferry men to endless training courses for meaningless tickets at the NAFC, just employ men who can already manage a boat, god keens, dey are plenty of dem.

 

They could cram far more cars onto the ferries than they do and reduce the number of sailings by half. When the ferries first came I mind the ferry men used to physically shunt the back end of your car sideweys across the deck to squeeze you on. Nethin bad ever came oh it. Nooadays they can hardly risk to put the cars two abreast.

 

Infact while we're at it make the ferry service run from 8am til 5pm only.

 

If that all sounds a bit extreme well its how it used to be and it wisna actually that bad.

[joenorth]

More people means more care required, more care means more carers and more care homes. It's as simple as that.

 

Also, while people are living longer because we have cured, or have better treatments for many of the diseases of old age that affect the physical body, things haven't moved on as quickly when it comes to brain diseases like Dementia and Altzheimers, so there are a lot of people alive now but away with the fairies, who would not have survived this long in the past and these people often require much higher levels of care than those with purely physical disabilities.

 

The whole demographic profile of the population has changed and the care system has had to change to match this.

 

ArabiaTerra's comment largely sums up the social care issue. While dementia is not exclusively associated with old age, the longer you live, the more likely you are to develop it. We have a ballooning population of older people in Shetland, and a declining population of people of working age. The greater percentage of people in all local care centres have dementia, and staffing levels have to be greater to care for them.

 

This is one phenomenon that isn't going to go away. Thus, this is an essential service. To be sure, we can cut various services/amenities associated with many other aspects of our lives in Shetland, and we'd manage just fine- we don't need the icing on the cake to enjoy eating it. However, how many of us nowadays would be prepared to look after a relative with dementia, perhaps with profound behavioural issues, for often many years? I'm old enough to remember when some older people were still looked after at home, and I know well the impact this had on (usually a female) member of the family in terms of having to be a full time carer.

 

We need to recognise our ageing population as one of the biggest issues in Shetland today, and count ourselves lucky that we have the money to spend on social care- long may this spending continue!

[stephen]

The simplest and most straight forward way to reduce costs (and quickly) would be to align council spending with any other scottish local authority. This would be incredibly unpopular as Shetland has had it so good for so long and ultimately so many services would need to be reduced or taken away.... Just look what has happened with respect to tuition charges and the Blueprint. It is my belief, however, that these difficult (and unpopular) changes should be made now to spare the pain in the future.

 

Straightforward and money saving options could include:

* Higher expectations for bin-men - more routes per day. This would mean that all bins should be put kerbside and binmen shouldnt need to collect bins from properties.

* Larger class sizes - aimed at the national average (30 pupils)

* Reduced ferry sailings out of peak times

* Reduction on community spending (fewer subsidised halls and play parks)

* Reduction of subsidies for public transport (bus and ferry)

* Reduction of Admin staff and middle management (introduce redundancies)

* Centralisation of School Meals service

* Reduction of street cleaning

etc...

[Claudias]

^ ^ ^

I wonder how many of the above would affect you personally? Do you ever use ferries,schools etc.?

[Guest Anonymous]

why are we paying funny money to home helps for doing dishes and making beds?

 

Why are we paying good money to keep folk in a care home when they have no idea if its new year or new york?

If I end up doolally then I would expect my family doctor to do the kindest thing and leave a little air in the syringe when administering medication, in fact it should be mandatory.

 

ferries can stop running at 7pm, you want to live on an island get a boat.

 

if we are to have a windfarm then put it on Papa Stour as more than 1 person has sugested, the council own the whole island so no payments to certain land owners, also not much top soil and no peat.

The folks in Papa can put up with it or leave their choice.

 

no more subsidies to fair isle it belongs to the rspb let them pay for it.

they get to choose who gets to lives there so WTF are we doing handing over cash.

 

Income from sullom could be increased drastically pay up or piss off but clean your mess up before you go.

 

4000 council staff for a population of 23000 what a bloody joke, I'm pretty sure grounds could be found to sack half of them without paying out redundancy.

 

islands allowance get rid.

 

recently advertised council jobs have had moving allowances in the thousands of pounds but only expected to work for a year before leaving WTF.

 

no jobs to be advertised outwith Shetland EU rules be damned.

 

I could go on all day but thats me denner break ower we

[Infiltrator]

We need to recognise our ageing population as one of the biggest issues in Shetland today, and count ourselves lucky that we have the money to spend on social care- long may this spending continue!

 

Yes it's an ageing population, but it's also a population that generally has significantly more savings than the previous generations. It's about time folk started to plan about how to fund their own care to take some pressure off the rapidly increasing burden of the islands social care.

[Infiltrator]

The simplest and most straight forward way to reduce costs (and quickly) would be to align council spending with any other scottish local authority. This would be incredibly unpopular as Shetland has had it so good for so long and ultimately so many services would need to be reduced or taken away.... Just look what has happened with respect to tuition charges and the Blueprint. It is my belief, however, that these difficult (and unpopular) changes should be made now to spare the pain in the future.

 

Straightforward and money saving options could include:

* Higher expectations for bin-men - more routes per day. This would mean that all bins should be put kerbside and binmen shouldnt need to collect bins from properties.

* Larger class sizes - aimed at the national average (30 pupils)

* Reduced ferry sailings out of peak times

* Reduction on community spending (fewer subsidised halls and play parks)

* Reduction of subsidies for public transport (bus and ferry)

* Reduction of Admin staff and middle management (introduce redundancies)

* Centralisation of School Meals service

* Reduction of street cleaning

etc...

 

 

Should've been started about 5 years ago.

[JGHR]

^ ^ ^

I wonder how many of the above would affect you personally? Do you ever use ferries,schools etc.?

 

If I still lived in Shetland every one of those changes would directly affect me personally and I would still be happy to see them made. However since I live in Brisbane Australia nothing the SIC does makes a blind bit of difference to me personally.

[Guest Anonymous]

wan more rant afore I go £3million to fix up da pier at waas yet a deep water berth at scalloway is on hold due to lack of funds, how much return are we going to get from a new pier at waas and how much from a deep water berth at scalloway, its a no brainer yet them that makes the decisions have no brains.

the Foula ferry can leave from scalloway so no disruption to service for the good folks out there with this decision, in fact it would benefit them with less hassle getting to the ferry when on the mainland.

[Ghostrider]

Why is the Shetland public still paying for the essy kert service when everything it collects is used as fuel for cheaper heating. The many paying and the few benefitting again.

 

Why does the council pay the glass crushing place to take the glass off their hands? Same thing.

[Infiltrator]

 

4000 council staff for a population of 23000 what a bloody joke,

 

 

And therein I believe lies the problem.

Reduce the well paid council jobs and ultimately the Shetland population will reduce.

The council I'm sure are well aware of this and I believe it's one of the big drivers for the windfarm - this would then allow the council to carry on as normal and maintain the current population levels.

[Guest Anonymous]

Reduce the well paid council jobs and ultimately the Shetland population will reduce.

 

GOOD gettin rid of some of those muppets could only be beneficial to the islands, paying folk to do non jobs just so as they'll bide here is insanity.

[ArabiaTerra]

Yep, the glory days are over, it's time to tighten our belts. It's a shame there isn't some big infrastructure project we could invest in, something that would give us a steady, multi-million pound income for the foreseeable future in a rapidly growing industrial service sector. Pity that.

 

Wait a minute....