As we all know the UK has a severe debt crisis. The Goverment is imposing pay freezes and cuts on those public sector workers it hasn't yet sacked. The private sector is not doing much better. People are going to have to pay more into their pension, retire later and get less money at the end of this. University students are going to to be burdened with debts that a great many of them will not have paid off by the time they are 51 or more when the 30 year rule clicks in. The list goes on and on it seems. Is it endless? No, the Government has "found" a little bit of money to introduce a new payment for vitally important work. Eric Pickles (is there a nastier MP currently in Parliament?) has come up with £250million - seems to have been in a Tesco bag at the back of a broom cupboard where it had been overlooked before - to hand out to councils that collect black bins weekly instead of fortnightly. (For those you living in Turkey, all the recyclable waste - food, glass, metal, paper, cardboard, etc. - are generally collected weekly anyway).
Meanwhile, our city council has decided to grant £60,000 (I don't know if this was found in a Tesco bag) to the park that our house overlooks. The relevant parks committee is going to recommend that this money is spent on - guess what: clearing the lake of toxic blue-green algae? cutting down and making safe the trees that have fallen during storms? renovating the sports pitches and replacing damaged equipment? Well, no. The have decided to appoint a Park Projects Manager. This will, I guess, be a professional/managerial level post with commensurate salary. Add the on-costs to this - employer's pension contributions, office space, access to secretarial services, an adverizing fund, and so on - and I estimate the full cost of this appointment will be ... £60,000. So we can stop worrying about what projects to plan, because there won't be any money left for them.
Still must remain positive about this. I'm off to look in the cupboard under out stairs to see if there are any bulky Tesco bags in there.