Sack some civil servants.

Unpopular for civil servants - maybe. Although they might prefer to work for a less stagnant council than TDC.

But there’s only 750 civil servants in Thanet and c.30,000 in KCC compares to the 130,000 people in Thanet and 1.3M in Kent.

Why is it so difficult to sack civil servants?

Why are local politicians even reluctant to discuss it?

It doesn’t have to be all of them.

Just the incompetent ones.

There seems an expectation that civil service failure is acceptable.

Or that council tax should ever increase to support that failure.

Or that public funds are simply to fund more civil servants.

Why should the Kent public fund RTC (plus the other town councils), TDC (plus the other Districts), KCC, GOSE and SEEDA pus miscellaneoius Quangos?

Civil servasnts all of them. And not doctors or nurses or teachers.

Why not publish all the salary costs, pensions, cars, expenses, offices, benefits and allowances by person - and the public and councillors can take a view on the cost, requirement and value.

The public's paying for it all - so show the public the costs.

We seem to have mere admin and bureacracy just for bin collections and road repairs from our councils.

That doesn't cost £60M per District or £2Bn for Kent to administer or provide.

We’ve now got another TDC webcam session delayed or avoided because the microphones don’t work.

They didn’t know that before – back in December?

A replacement £20 microphone couldn’t be found? It couldn’t be filmed with a typed transcript afterwards?

If all else fails the councillors or civil servants couldn’t record and film it on their publicly-funded Blackberry?

Just embarrassing excuses for failure.

Sack 'em.

And a deep and cynical reluctance to be open and transparent for public decisions and public funds.

Clearly the councillors and civil servants don’t want us to view the piffle and nonsense that passes for a council meeting.

And not even the civil servants salaries are viewed or discussed by councillors.

No wonder we have such bloat and featherbedding with £22M of the £60M tax-take spent on salaries.

Sack a few.

I think most people would prefer that than closing down museums.

The latest figures from TDC show over £200k spent on company cars. And c.£350k on overtime.

So that’s civil service pensions (4 types of civil service pension) plus company cars, plus free parking, plus overtime, plus 0% pay-increases-that-are-30%-pay-increases and salaries greater than the private sector average.

And towns that have burned down and fallen down.

And town planning by guesswork.

And the worst pollution in the South East.

And civil servant increases by 30%: c.150 extra staff in the last 3 years.

The councillors don’t seem to know what they’re doing - or what to do.

Sack a few more staff and sell the cars.

If Margate now has nearly 30% unemployment and Dreamland derelict then the ones that got us into this mess are hardly the ones to get us out are they?

And with polluted air and water from Manston and Thor the price of incompetence from our civil servants seems to be the highest lung cancer rate and most polluted drinking water in the South East.

Reform the council through P45.

While with Richard Samuel and Brian White of the Gang of Four, the fraudulent 0% pay rises and removing monitors and Caribbean tax havens for Planning developments means Police investigations, repaying the £60k pay increase and removing their pensions.

No pay rises for failure. The criminals seem to be in the council.

And the civil servants are leading the councillors by the nose.

Even recommending pay cuts for councillors rather than civil servants.

While the failure of Party politics for governance means the councillors simply barrack each other rather than concentrating on ensuring good governance.

It’s neither Conservatism nor Socialism – mere Cretinism.

And the result is the worst council in Britain with 50% of council tax spent on civil service salaries and reserves and dereliction and failure.

You couldn’t make it up could you?

And with c.40% of GDP spent on tax - with only minor percentage point differences between the parties - just imagine how the rest is wasted on bloat and waste.

And that's 4 months of the year working for the taxman to fund the public sector.

Even the Government itself - with the Total Place intiative to pool all public funds by region - estimates at least 15% is wasted.

I'll bet it's far higher don't you?

Publish all the payroll and costs by department in Excel. It already exists for payroll.

Simply publish it.

A public "mashup" and aggregator would within minutes provide the basis for comparison and improvement.

With the figures we could decuide if we want the same funding, or more or less and how that should be spent: museums or admin or hospitals.

Time for Change