IF I wanted to hire organisational help for a p***-up in a brewery, I certainly wouldn't consider those cock-up and cancellation merchants, Liverpool City Council.
I might, just might, trust the city council to do a marginally better job than, say, a team from Wirral Council.
But that's only because even a gang of morons in a hurry could organise ANYTHING better than Wirral Council.
In truth, there is little to choose between these two useless councils, which through their bungling are holding back the regeneration of Merseyside - despite Liverpool having the huge advantage of being European Capital of Culture for 2008.
This lack of progress, and stalled projects - such as the failed Fourth Grace, the shelved tram system, and the watered down Neptune project for New Brighton - means everything is chugging along half-heartedly in our region while other urban centres, such as Manchester, Birmingham, Leeds and even ugly old Stoke-on-Trent, are truly booming.
The latest howler by Liverpool City Council is the cancellation of the Summer Pops in this the city's 800th birthday. You couldn't make it up.
On the eve of Capital of Culture the stoopid Liberal-Democrat council pulls the plug on the one event that has done more than any other to put Liverpool back on the musical and culture map in recent years.
City Council Leader, Warren Bradley, says the authority could not afford up to £750,000 that it would have taken to subsidise the event this year.
So the Pops have been pulled until next year, while Bradley says the money is needed to boost the council's "front-line services".
Eh? What vital services would they be, then, as this hugely over-staffed council tries to balance its books?
Well, perhaps some of the "front-line services" are the jobs the council has been recruiting for in recent weeks. Here are just a few of those jobs ...
Head of the Leader of the Council's Office (salary up to £34, 986). The successful applicant "must be able to produce briefings and draught (sic) speeches and articles and give direct assistance to the Leader of the Council".
Hmm... Well I have some experience of DRAFTING speeches for tedious windbags. Maybe I should apply.
The post is just one job in a team of flunkeys who Bradley has dancing in attendance each day as the city lurches from one cock-up to the next.
You have to remember that City Council is BY FAR the biggest employer in the city (with a staggering 19,000 people on the payroll!), thus distorting the economy of the whole region and discouraging genuine risk-taking by private entrepeneurs.
The city council is supposed to be struggling to balance its books, but still every week it carries on recruiting to jobs that I wouldn't call "front-line" at all.
For instance, an Arts Marketing Manager is now wanted at a salary of up to £45, 177. Duties include logo-launching and lunching, and booking acts that no-one in Liverpool wants to watch.
I hear that Mongolian throat warblers are a "must have" act for any self-respecting Arts Marketing Manager these days.
How about becoming Team Leader - Traffic Management for the city? The salary's not bad - up to £39, 132 a year. Duties, presumably, involve sorting out the total b****-up the council has so far made of the city centre's streets. Or maybe adding to it.
If you don't fancy that, how about becoming a Senior Patrol Officer (plastic policeman) for the city. You get a free, silly uniform, modelled on those worn by members of the Ruritanian Secret Police.
You must be able to "supervise (the) city wide static guarding and patrol response services", whatever they might be.
Liverpool's plastic policemen must also have "experience of attending joint agency meetings and community forums".
That means having tea and buns and spouting platitudinous crap for hours on end. Easy!
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barman burly wrote...
We lost our Empire many years ago. It now appears that Liverpool City Council (or Dorks as I will refer them ), are intent on recreating their own. The more unneccary people they employ at inflated salaries the prouder they appear at their success. These dorks seem to take insufferable delight in wasting rate-payers' money. IF they gave the people and the city what it needed and not what they felt we would appreciate we might accept some of this wastage. How big will the dorks' standing army (city council workforce, currently 19,000-strong) be by 2008? Isn't it illegal to have one? Heaven help the tourists if they do arrive.
Posted by: barman burly | February 12, 2007 11:01 AM