Apr 2009 08

Non-job of the week14

Guardian non-jobs 2009 8.4.09 This week on the Guardian website, we’ve found 515 jobs in local government on offer.  You can see on the right the pay grades they offer, with only 2 over £100,000.  It shows, week after week for you to see, that the pay and perks in the public sector have outstripped those in the private sector.

Our non-job of the week comes from Tower Hamlets:

“Personal Best Adviser
£30,843 – £32,976

Tower Hamlets is a distinctive, unique London Borough that is home to a diverse, vibrant, multicultural community. As part of an exciting regeneration programme, we aim to improve the quality of life for all who live and work in the area. It's also an ideal opportunity to further your career.

Tower Hamlets is a Host Borough for the 2012 Olympic and Paralympic Games, and the council's 2012 Unit is responsible for ensuring that the borough's communities are in the best position to take advantage of the once-in-a-lifetime opportunities that this offers. The 2012 Unit is currently seeking to recruit two new roles that will play an important part in securing the best possible Olympic legacy for Tower Hamlets.

Personal Best is a training and volunteer programme that uses the excitement surrounding the London 2012 Olympic and Paralympic Games as a way of encouraging individuals to learn new skills, engage in their communities, raise their aspirations and increase their chances of getting a job.

The 2012 games will require 70,000 games time volunteers, and the Personal Best Programme aims to prepare people for this challenge by offering relevant training and support. On completion of the training delegates are guaranteed an interview to become a London 2012 volunteer.

The Personal Best Adviser will be responsible for coordinating the borough's wrap-around activity, promoting Personal Best to hard to reach target audiences and working closely with employers, training providers, the community, local agencies and partners to broker volunteering, employment and training opportunities. Prior experience of working in a one-on-one environment with clients from disadvantaged socio-economic backgrounds is vital, as is a positive 'can do' attitude to motivate and support participants throughout their programme experience.”

Isn’t it a bit premature to be advertising for people to train Olympic volunteers – the stadium hasn’t even been built yet!  But the important thing to note is that councils now have to pick up some of the slack in funding positions for the Olympics.  It just shows how mismanaged the Olympic plans have been and how – as always – local government is there to spend, spend, spend.

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  • Hardeep Singh

    “spend, spend, spend” it’s ringing in my ears – I was always fearful of the Olympics because I could foresee the carry on that would ensue. The usual mismanagement then pushed onto other organisations, quangos, etc to take the blame. The only games that appear to be going on are political in nature, what a shame. This is clearly one project that will remain in the public gaze and will be difficult to push the schedule back so unfortunately the only varibale remaining will be to push the cost up (or should say the burden on taxpayers). You can make no doubt once the galley’s oarsmen have been sufficiently whipped they won’t be at the front to witness the games the freeloading councillors and MPs will be there enmasse.

  • Steve Robson

    Check your Maths, Timmy!

  • Justin Downes Residents First !

    It’s clear Steve Robson is a sort of
    local government ‘spendaholic. Perhaps some counselling could be the answer ? Thank goodness he is not in the K and C Cabinet;he would dashing off buying more Bentleys, and possibly even a Gulfstream, for Leader Cockell’s NY trips

  • Steve Robson

    and your comment is based on what evidence??? God help whatever residents you claim to put first if you think I’m a spendaholic for pointing out that tim’s narrative doesn’t match the table he publishes.
    I know you people don’t like evidence, but it can help; you can’t function on prejudice alone forever you know!

  • Steve Robson

    oh and K&C have the third lowest council tax in London, which is probably more important than any trivialities about Bentley’s, whether they buy them or not (of which I have no idea). If the TPA actually ever focused on what drives spending rather than sensationalist nonsense, we might actually all get taxed as little as their wealthy backers do.

  • Steve Robson

    and this is brilliant:
    http://www.taxpayersalliance.org/quote/
    should save the TPA and their wealthy backers a fortune. They’ll be able to pay their taxes now!

  • Justin Downes Residents First

    Steve you are an excitable ‘spendaholic’!
    K & C is the possibly the most compact and richest of any Borough so you don’t need to be a genius to know that it should not be too expensive to run.
    Clearly not everybody thinks that running a car pool with over £200,000 worth of massively depreciating motors-plus 2 drivers on £30k a year each is trivial.
    Do you really think that they need to spend £1.7 million plus on PR etc ? Or buy a graveyard for £9 million ? Or fund the rich man’s hobby of opera at Holland Park(£4 million)
    Steve, I have no idea what your business track record is, but think how much lower tax could be if the reserves of £204 million were
    returned in part to us poor taxpayers and an
    end to bizarre projects such as buying graveyards implemented. Oh and I forgot..and not renting multi million £ houses at £7k a month.
    With your ideas of fiscal prudence I doubt you could run a tap !

  • Hardeep Singh

    Gentleman! Welcome, I thought that no one would be interested in this particular thread but alas I see my old friend Steve on here. Alas I can’t offer a further contribution to the thread but what’s heartening is that at least we’re all discussing it and debate we must. However there’s little need for hot under the collar name calling let’s keep it nice and clean :) You know I’m that kind of guy :) -
    However Steve old chum, the taxpayers fund masters shouldn’t really be an issue after all if it’s legal then all channels of funding are permissable. As for the view and opinion expressed by the TPA again if it’s a legal standpoint then why not? You should welcome the TPA for acting as a fulcrum to the politcal debate, helping to balance government excesses and sole opinions. Anyway back to my cup of tea ….

  • Justin Downes Residents First

    Thank you Hardeep for interposing yourself and correcting Steve’s misperceptions !

  • john fj brown

    Surely our public servants don’t EARN, they are PAID

  • Steve Robson

    Thats nice John Brown, and incredible that you know the work of EVERY public servant in Britain and that the ALL don’t earn their money. Just maybe, many do and YOU DON’T you arrogant moron.

  • Justin Downes

    I think we have to speak from our experiences Steve.
    You may not care for John fj Brown’s view of the average public servant, however it seems to have widespread currency amongst the great democratic mass.
    What really interests me is this. Despite the vast amount of money spent on ‘communications’ at national and local government level the public still view those who run their lives as overpaid, over pensioned and over us’ arrogant morons’

  • Steve Robson

    1. He wasn’t talking about the average, he was talking about all public servants, all teachers, cops, everyone.
    2. Polling evidence doesn’t support his or your view anyway. You and he just represent the (nasty) right wing blogging community, who unfortunately the left appear to now be trying to emulate.
    3. I guess in any case your not really in a position to judge how many people do their jobs. I hear comments like “do I get value for money from Council services”, but it is not the job of public servants to give you Justin or you Tim, value for money from the services, but rather to ensure the Council achieves value for money. If you don’t receive that service, eg, social care, education etc how can you ever get value for money from it as an individual. The reality is however that many services, particularly social care, but also housing and other services have improved enormously over the last 30 years. Just because you are anti collectivism doesn’t make that untrue. I guess in the end you either believe in society or you don’t. I guess I do and you don’t.
    As such, I would increase the spend on overseas aid, even though I get no direct benefit or value for mnoney from it at all. My guess is that you Justin and your friends Tim and Matthew, would just end overseas aid. A difference of philosophy, but not one from which you can infer that everyone who has anything to do with overseas aid is useless, any more than I can infer that all conservatives are useless, just because I happen to disagree with them on almost everything.

  • kent taxpayer

    Steve probably thinks money grows on trees!