Council
Got a nice letter in the mail today with all sorts of nasty connotations to it from Edinburgh council demanding overdue council tax from a previous year. This despite the fact I wrote to them concerning it ages ago and never had a reply - this morning's pay or else letter doesn't even mention it. This comes on top of the two letters I've sent them asking for a new council tax book for this financial year since they still have me down as unemployed months later, despite being told twice now that I am not. Oh and the 'overdue' bill from a previous year originally came with a letter explaining that they had computer trouble and staff problems and so they think they may have overlooked something from last year...
Doesn't that instill confidence? They 'think' they may still need money form me? Don't they know for sure? Given they can't even deal with their mail who knows how accurate any of this is... No doubt at some point I will get a letter demanding more money for this financial year at the employed rate once they finally get round to dealing with that (and I'm sure they will deny ever receiving any of the letters I sent them - they once took something like 8 months to reply to a letter I sent a few years back, so fair to say they are not terribly efficient. I think they train their staff the same place Sam worked in Gilliam's Brazil).
Ah, Edinburgh City Council doing its bit to make life better for the city's citizens (and this is with the council holding a huge surplus from previous years tax in the bank - around 25 million, which is more than a justifiable 'rainy day' emergency amount I think - and still raising the tax by more than inflation each year into the bargain) - still they need to wring every penny they can get from locals to pay for teams to remove the huge chunks of gum from the pavement, left by visiting Italian teenagers and, of course, to pay those efficient people in their offices who don't reply to the mail citizens send them...
Hi there - as someone who formed an escape committee and managed to crawl out from under the wire of local government I can confirm that your worst suspicions about ineffeciency and waste are well-founded.
ReplyDeleteI worked for a mid-range council south of the border (near Newcastle) and at a time when they were cutting bin men's wages and reducing other front-line services, they were paying huge consultancy fees from leading business schools to advise on how to, yes you guessed it, improve services.
And don't get me started on the continuous round of Best Value initiatives, quality seminars and a load of other tosh that increased the numbers and bank accounts of "policy officers" that the council tax paying public just can't do without.
Surely Iron Council?
ReplyDelete;)
I assure you it's not just Edinburgh. My favourite has to be when I, as a student, went to the council, filled in all the forms saying I was a student and didn't have to pay council tax.
ReplyDeleteMonths later, a letter dropped through the door saying that debt collectors would be visiting me. I telephoned the council and they told me that they had a backlog and hadn't processed my forms yet!
On the plus side, the debt collectors never arrived.