May 2009 12

Elderly couple denied meals on wheels whilst council execs scoop £1m9

Yesterday the Coventry Telegraph used the our ‘Town Hall Rich List’, published last month, to run a story about the top ten bosses at Coventry City Council raking in no less than £1million between them. The fact that today the same newspaper published an article about two very elderly residents being denied 'meals on wheels' due to the local authority’s cost cutting measures goes along way to illustrate just where the priorities of this council lie. And it doesn’t appear to be with those who really need its services.

As top local execs in Coventry enjoy generous salaries of over £100k on the taxpayer, Wallace and Lillian Rowley – 91 and 89 years old respectively – are having to survive on sandwiches and the occasional microwave meal donated by neighbours after having been refused meals on wheels on the grounds that they ‘aren’t disabled enough’. This comes at the same time as a hike in the cost of these meals to £4.10 as part of budget cuts.

Residential home Mrs. Rowley suffers with advanced rheumatoid arthritis, whilst Mr Rowley has heavily bandaged legs due to ulcerations and often experiences “giddy spells” according to the article.

Mrs. Rowley told the reporter: “All we can do now is look at these four walls. It’s not safe for us to cook as we don’t have the strength in our arms and legs. We end up just dropping things”.

Despite this, they’ve been judged self-sufficient in accordance with newly tightened rules on who receives social care as the council try to save money.

The question really is how these highly paid officials sleep at night when their cuts deny such services and jeopardise the health of needy individuals, all whilst council spending supports hair-brained environmental projects and a £4million publicity machine?

When we pay our taxes, most of would like to think our money goes – as a priority – to provide basic frontline services and to support those in need through no fault of their own, but it appears that such people are having to take a back seat as money is eaten up by hefty pension schemes for council workers, increasing allowances for councillors, fat cat salaries of executives, an ever-growing middle-management level earning double the average salary each and glossy leaflets and publicity, promoting the council to an electorate who have no choice over who provides their services.

Coventry City Council defended themselves yesterday, using the usual arguments that these inflated salaries carry “a lot of responsibility” and attract “the best people in a competitive work market”, but do they really? After all, they’ve attracted the very people who’ve sat back and allowed this fundamentally unfair distribution of public resources to continue. In an ideal world, we’d have our basic services provided and the rest of our council tax returned to us as a cut so that we can spend it as we see fit, especially in this recession. With this in mind it really is all the more appalling to learn that these supposedly dynamic individuals at the top of the local government tree are removing the most basic wants of the public whilst directing more and more money in their own direction – a sure-fire way to lose the faith of residents who’re completely fed-up of being ripped-off.

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  • Steve Robson

    You do talk some rubbish, you people.
    Its easy to snipe, but its clear that if you held the purse-strings (unpaid obviously), every local authority would overspend. Choices have to be made. Services cannot be given to all who want them. Do you not get that simple concept, Fiona.
    You really are clueless!

  • Dave Thompson

    Oh come off it Steve! How can you call this rubbish? Self centred executives would rather feather thier own nests than help those in real need!? Labour need to get over it: Councils are NOT a business!!!

  • Steve Robson

    Easy to say when you know nothing about it. If they were self centred then I expect they’d have become bankers and earned 100 times as much.
    No doubt you’ll tell me that they wouldn’t have got a job with the bank, but thats just prejudice rather than evidence.
    Choices must be made, that’s hard and its easy for the TPA to pretend they don’t, but just as the BNP find when they become Councillors, its easy to criticise and rabble rouse, rather harder to actually deliver!

  • Dave Thompson

    I don’t think anyone really needs to know the intricate details of this particular case, because this story is repeated throughout the UK year after year.
    Local papers are filled with stories such as local swimming pools closing down as the Executive award themselves inflation-busting pay rises citing that long-favoured excuse: “we need to attract the best”…
    I’d rather these employees *did* work for a bank – at least they’d be open to market forces and profit generation rather than laying back on ever increasing council tax revenues forced from the population…

  • Steve Robson

    The cost of people earning £100K plus is less than 0.1% of total Council spend, so its impact on Council tax will be virtually non existent, as the manipulators of the TPA must well know, unless they are very poor at Maths.
    A far smaller proportion of the local authority workforce earn £100K than the 2% of the whole workforce who do.
    But what if you are wrong and the small number of well paid staff are keeping down costs, that is keeping control of the other 99.9% of Council expenditure. What if the 0.1% disappeared, but the 99.9% increased by 20%. This is actually the reality, though you’ll never believe it. But be careful what you wish for!
    The one compensation will be the satisfaction in knowing that a bunch of not very bright right wingers have increased their own tax bills!

  • Dave Thompson

    Can we avoid the below the belt comments about “not very bright right wingers” please. It embarrasses you far more than it embarrasses us.
    As someone who worked at a council for 2 years, and now works in a City firm, I can assure you that I have firsthand experience of how much Council Tax revenue is wasted. And it is *staggering*. And it’s wasted at all levels, from your filing clerks to your executive.
    Tell me Steve, if your toothpaste doubled in price in the last 10 years but didn’t clean your teeth as well as it did previously, would you be still be happy to buy it?
    The general problem is that taxpayers such as me are confused on why council tax has doubled in 10 years, but are exposed daily to councils who come, cap in hand, to the general public asking for more money. And this story from the TPA hilights this puzzling situation.

  • Mark

    Don’t worry folks the times are a changing, once the MP’s are in jail it’s the councils that are in the spotlight next. They should be very afraid, the public are on to you. Mr Robson your left wing friends are about to be resigned to history.

  • david warner

    steve robson you are a disgrace to humun beings talking about making choices these pour couple havent got a choice they have proply worked all there lives paid there taxs and now they just need a little help and i and most people expext them to get it no quistions asked HOW DO YOU SLEP AT NIGHT ps and i do hope you or your family dont need help any time soon treat others as you expext to be treated your self think on

  • Steve Robson

    I’ve no problems sleeping, Mr Can’t Spell. I believe in taxes. Its you lot who support avoidance, evasion and deletion of taxes. That’s why there are loads of people who don’t get the service they should, that’s why hard choices have to be made. I’m afraid the pressures of an ageing population, longer lifespans, more extensive services (eg recycling, social care) and higher resource costs (eg landfill) will make this inevitable. Its certainly not caused by 0.2% of officials earning over £100K compared to 2% of taxpayers as a whole!
    Yes you are right “Mark”, the combination of these pressures and the huge costs of bailing out a failing private sector means I do have to be afraid, as do all ordinary people, because there will be massive cuts in public services and we will all suffer, except of course the rich backers of the TPA, who only use private services.
    Once again the Right get it wrong. They supported slavery, they supported apartheid, they’ve always supported wrecking public services. One day, maybe, they will realise the error of their ways and repent. Unfortunately because none of them are very bright, I suspect that day will never come and they’ll continue to be deceived by the rich paymasters of the TPA and their allies at the Daily Mail.