Thursday, November 29, 2012

Advice to CCC re making savings

Mark James has said that the council need to make savings of some ridiculous amount. Perhaps he should look at getting rid of all the "directors" of services including his own post, at a rough guess that must surely save a million quid a year. I'm not sure that the present executive board provides any true value for money either and then there are the toothless scrutiny committees.

The next to go would be any office space that the council rent rather than own, followed swiftly by its vanity publishing effort that gets shoved down our throats whether we want it or not. Maybe they ought to call in the various loans that have been given to lame ducks and get the development companies to pay proper amounts for land released at peppercorn rents.

I wonder how much money is wasted on software and computing but huge amounts could be saved by using open source software; a lot of cities and regions in Europe have migrated to Linux on servers and desktops for annual savings of millions of pounds, several US government departments have done the same.

The one thing they shouldn't do is close public toilets in busy seaside villages, Pendine, Laugharne, Llansteffan and Ferryside to name but a few, or else the piles of ordure will put off the very welcome visitors who use the local businesses!