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News and Comment July 2011

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6 July (Part 2) - Long Service Awards revisited - TIC too

More information came in about this morning’s unfair dismissal blog after it went on line so if you read it before the picture of its manager Richard Edwards was added it might be worth reading it again. It has become apparent that the News Shopper reporter, Sophie Maden, not only didn’t hear Miss Caroline Queen’s cross-examination or the Judgment, she didn’t properly interview Miss Queen either. She had promised to go to Caroline’s home on Sunday 5th July but it never happened. I have a horrible feeling everything in the News Shopper came from Bexley council; there is no other obvious place such a one dimensional story could have come from.

I received a very slightly critical response to my 3rd July comment on Long Service Awards from ‘an old friend’ within Bexley council. Maybe it wasn’t that critical and I may have read too much into it but the point being made was that for some council staff the sums involved are large, more than a week’s pay. I don’t think anyone would argue that council staff shouldn’t be taking the gifts on offer, I wished only to point out that I haven’t found expensive gifts to be the norm elsewhere, but maybe I am out of date, it’s quite a long time since I was closely involved with anything remotely like Long Service Awards and the mementoes I saw had little monetary value. What I wished to highlight is that Bexley council is too free with tax payers cash when it comes to wining and dining themselves, whether that be trips to posh hotels, lavishing fancy food on the mayor or celebrating cycle paths and that when anything is cut it is not councillors’ perks.

Another issue reported was that staff find it hard to reach 20 years service because there is a high risk that their job will have been contracted out before reaching that milestone. I’ve seen that happen to friends and relations who have been in the Civil Service or nationalised industries that were privatized. Not one of them had their conditions of service worsened and that must surely be the hallmark of a decent employer. Maybe that excludes Bexley council.

 

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