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Thursday 21 September 2023

Painfully non-essential



An interesting question for historians of the future - why was drivel so widely addictive among official communicators and the media? Here's an example from last week.

 
Derbyshire County Council could stop non-essential spending amid £46m debt

Derbyshire County Council could stop all non-essential spending and implement a recruitment freeze as a £46m budget black hole brings it to the "edge of bankruptcy".

It said the overspend had prompted "very painful" budget decisions...

Many of Derbyshire County Council's services are not statutory - meaning it does not legally have to provide them.

A freeze on all but statutory services may be issued if the authority cannot meet a balanced budget or if its reserves fall to "unacceptably low levels".


How can it be "very painful" to stop spending which is non-essential? Why spend on anything non-essential in the first place? Rhetorical questions of course, they have been doing it for decades.

3 comments:

Sam Vega said...

Some interesting points noticed about our new Unitary Authority we have just moved into. I have much more recycling to do, as they want us to separate different types of plastics, collect food waste (Ye Gods!) and take masses of stuff to different collection points. It's never any great distance, so I can combine it with dog-walking, but everywhere I go I seem to lug a bag full of flattened tetra-paks or plastic food trays. The latter lead to some good comedy moments when the dog tangles me in the lead and a gust of wind sends the lot bowling down the street. The household bin collectors actually go through your rubbish, and any "infringements" lead to your bin being tagged with a red plastic badge of shame, and they leave the bloody lot there.

As you said on here earlier, it's all a scam to make you do the sorting that they can't handle. I'm going to go out at night with mixed rubbish and leave it in a public bin near the Town Hall. I'll tip out the food waste, though, so the urban foxes can benefit.

Anonymous said...

@ Sam Vega. Local clowncil bin collectors tried it with me, a compliance bloke soon followed, when he asked where the rubbish had gone I told him I burnt it. I also explained I would burn every bit of my rubbish if they didn't take it away. Still waiting to hear back from them.

lfb

A K Haart said...

Sam - we've noticed differences between Derbyshire and Devon when we go on holiday. Devon seems to impose stricter requirements and they have food bins too. We have three bins, landfill, glass and recycling, no food bin. Not that we have much food waste, ours is mostly composted. We have a garden waste bin but that's an optional bin we pay for.

lfb - I could make use of a garden incinerator. I like burning stuff and judging by the smoke I think more people round here may be burning some of their waste.