Council budget cuts

[tlady]

Yes .. and full pay for the first 6? months, then 1/2 pay for the next 6.

[Muppet]

^^

 

That bit depends on length of service does it not?

 

It's a sliding scale depending on how long you've been employed up to a maximum of 6 months full pay, 6 months half.

[JustMe]

I recently saw a television programme praising a certain Doctor Beeching who was hired (at what was then great expense) to make necessary but unpopular decisions about the future of British Railways. Seems to me that the SIC need to hire someone similar to look at the entire staffing of the SIC from top to bottom and to find ways to provide much the same services but at a lower cost. Or even to provide required and essential services at a lower cost but to present the councillors with a clear plan for doing away with services that are not exactly essential.

 

Of course what we also need is a full council that is prepared to accept what such a person tells them despite the fact that many of the proposals would be vote losers. This is where I start to wonder if Dave Clark really did something sensible when considering the post of assistant chief executive. Could be that the near future will be interesting.

[Ghostrider]

^^ Just about the only positive thing it seems Clark did, or at least tried to do was to get rid of the Assistant CE post. Unfortunately he first began to ruin a good idea by proposing that a new post be created that appeared to more or less be going to take responisbility for the same duties, so it was just the same thing by a different name, trading one evil for another etc. Then of course he couldn't even get that right, so now we're lumbered with double the trouble and double the cost.

 

The salary for one of those posts alone would have gone quite some way twoards covering the music tuition defecit. Sooo kids, when your folks moan about how much your music lessons cost, just remind them that around half of what they're paying is filling the hole made by the chiefs making such a pig's ear of things that they now have to pay two salaries where there was only ever supposed to be one.

 

P.S.

 

A first step towards saving would be to use only bog standard multi purpose 80gsm paper for letters and print them in only black ink. Its maybe all nice and pretty having little bits of colour on everything and "nice thick quality" paper. But the fancy paper costs disproportionately more, printers print slower in colour, use more power, and the ink is considerably more expensive.

[Guest Anonymous]

we can't afford the bairns music lessons but we can throw £12m+ at mareel, we are going to charge the bairns more for their school dinners but the millers get a £400 grand let off.

 

Ms Budge said: “If it’s not (music tuition) then it will have to be something else.

 

I would sugest Clarks payoff and his girlfriends let off would be a good start

[peeriebryan]

we can throw £12m+ at mareel

About half of Mareel's funding has come from sources out-with Shetland

[north]

And on the other hand, they agree to provide funding to the Shetland College: for a programme that was not in the budget, not on the radar, and had NEVER even been considered before last week.

 

The enticement of "free" money, yet again drives home an easy sell and throws all pretence of an orderly budgeting process out the window. Of course all this occurred right in the middle of the biggest budget shortfall the council has ever faced, and in the midst of commitments to slash expenditures and maintain financial restraint, an orderly commitment to save money by slashing social and cultural programmes, and now this? They are like drug addicts, they just can't stay away from spending from the vast pot of gold.

 

I have absolutely nothing against the Shetland College, but I do have a major reservation about this supposed new found commitment to fiscal responsibility and accountability that the council commited itself to only days before this.

 

If you are either young or old and not in the workforce, prepared to get screwed.

 

They amazingly find money for this project in the budget. They amazingly found 5.3 million in last years budget for the Single Status pay scheme - all of this sounds like sloppy accounting or a budget that should be screwed down to harder to find the savings they want withour hitting Shetland's most vulnerable citizens.

 

 

Seems to me like business as usual.

 

I would like to publicly thank the Councillors that have the balls to openly fight all this nonsense that is going on in the council. Come election time, the electorate will remember who you are; although I am very concerned that some of the best representatives on this council will have had their fill at the end of these unbelievable activities that the council is currently preoccupied with, and decide not to bother any more.

 

Mods - you really should unlock my very fair and balanced poll on SIC budgeting capabilites!

[Kavi Ugl]

Yes .. and full pay for the first 6? months, then 1/2 pay for the next 6.

 

Yep, you can self certificate for 5/7(not sure) days then you can be off under the doctor for 6 months on full pay. All you have to do is submit a doctor's line/sick note along with your timesheet.

 

As I understand it, at the end of those 6 months your pay is indeed cut to half but you can come back to work for, say, two weeks then go off again on full pay.

 

The SIC has signed up to/brought in so many left wing "employment rights" that it's impossible to get the sack.

 

I won't reveal my source but the sickness record at the SIC is beyond words.....

 

And they want to save money......

[MuckleJoannie]

I don't know if the SIC still do it but there used to be a policy for Return to Work interviews if you were absent for more than a set number of times.

[tirvaluk]

Yes .. and full pay for the first 6? months, then 1/2 pay for the next 6.

 

Yep, you can self certificate for 5/7(not sure) days then you can be off under the doctor for 6 months on full pay. All you have to do is submit a doctor's line/sick note along with your timesheet.

 

As I understand it, at the end of those 6 months your pay is indeed cut to half but you can come back to work for, say, two weeks then go off again on full pay.

 

 

 

 

And they want to save money......

I dont work for the council but my employer has the same agreement, I thought everybody had it.If you are off for 6 months you go down to half pay, but if you come back to work, and go off again you are only on half pay.After a year you don't get paid.

[Njugle]

I dont work for the council but my employer has the same agreement, I thought everybody had it.If you are off for 6 months you go down to half pay,

 

Ahem, no, not necessarily. I've worked for firms in the past, generally good firms at that, that paid nothing for the first three days, and then you were required to provide a sick line to claim statutory sick pay for any subsequent days, which is about the same as dole. That is common enough in the private sector.

[tlady]

I'm not saying that the long term sick employees should have to lose out.

 

Just the skivers that have the odd day or two off .. because they can.

[lerwick]

Why not pay Sandy Cluness 10 million to stand down. We would soon be in profit going by his track record over the last few years.

[Ally]

This may be a lazy, obvious and admittedly quite unproductive comment, but I can't help but wonder how many kids could be taught music for, say, £250,000?

[icepick239]

This may be a lazy, obvious and admittedly quite unproductive comment, but I can't help but wonder how many kids could be taught music for, say, £250,000?

Hi there Ally:

Let's not say 250,000, but let's say 1,100,000 instead and that's only in the past month or so

These Councillors spend money like out-of-control Lotto Winners.

That is, all on the wrong things.