Yesterday’s Daily Telegraph contained an interesting piece on the effect of the cuts to Council funding. The newspaper states that “It is a sign of how bloated local government had become that councils have shed 230,000 jobs without hitting front-line services”. Of course front line services have been hit but not in ways which significantly impinge on the services people receive. Standards have been eased but not sufficiently to cause complaints. At the yesterday evening’s Town Council meeting I was asked if the Babergh District Council staff were having to apply for their own jobs. I weaselled out of by saying that whilst I didn’t have any details it would follow that as we amalgamated services we should be able to do so with a lesser number of staff. Consequently people were not applying for their own jobs but for new jobs under the new regime. As night follows day there would be winners and losers. The keys to success were that the right people were chosen for the new posts– not necessarily those who could do the talk but those able to walk the walk. The other issue was that people who no longer had a job were treated fairly to ease the transition to the next phase of their lives – (e.g. statutory redundancy payments are enhanced by 50%). Times change and there is no iron rice bowl anywhere any more. The full piece can be found on http://www.telegraph.co.uk/comment/telegraph-view/9755916/Taxing-councils.html