I really wish Civics was taught in schools. People have so little understanding about the limits of local government reach. Like we can just move money between budgets, that we choose to do emergency patches instead of doing maintenance, how permissions work, things that we are absolutely not allowed to do even tho you’ve clearly told me ‘it’s just common sense’.
80% of the work is set by central government and the 20% is the stuff you want but the money for that is needed to prop up the central government demand which is always 30-40% below the budget required. And I’m not even including social care and education in that, their figures are spiralling down so fast I can’t keep up with it.
That every five years a new lot pop up who promised you that ‘I’ll fix it, I’m Mr Businessman. I’ll be the Councillor that shows those thick, lazy officers how it’s done!’ Then cut all your half way through projects, set you onto some other thing that is under resourced and cobbled together while you try and stay on top of your stat duties.
It’s different to the private sector, regulations all over the bloody shop. Democracy is imperfect, laborious, slow, infuriating (pick another option why dontcha).
Plus all the flexi-time = less time crap, that we prefer to WFH when often would rather be in even though our offices have black mould all up the blinds, that we are overpaid, we are lazy, we are thick, we have ‘gold plated pensions’, (that generation is lumbering out of the door, good luck to the old bastards live your retirement for me, send photos). That ‘I pay your wages’ when less than 20p pa of your council tax covers my whole department.