Local Government and the squishy fish

Mrs Cobden has spent much of the week in Harrogate, trying to lobby Councillors at the LGA Conference. She arrived back on Thursday evening with bagfuls of goodies for the kids – we’ll probably be spending the weekend throwing out some of the old toys to make way for the new.

We’ve got squishy morph like creatures, boxes of sweets and a ‘Finding Nero’ style, squishy orange fish with the words “Peterborough City Council: Business Transformation” on the side. By all accounts, there were loads of bespoke exhibition stands where local authorities were promoting themselves to the thousands of Councillors and Council Officers that attend this event.

You do wonder what it’s all for. I get cross enough when my Council waste money on sending me marketing crap about themselves. Why a local council should be paying to give a Councillor from another council a squishy fish seems utterly incomprehensible.

Mrs Cobden was perplexed by this too so asked the question to one of those people manning the stands. She was told that ‘we get a budget from Government, because we are a beacon council, to promote good practice to other local authorities.’ So the squishy fish are part of the Government’s strategy to improve public services across the country.

I can’t complain too much. Mrs Cobden also brought home some golf balls and a nice leather score card from Cheshire East Council. Inside the score card are lots of facts about the Council such as its population and that it has 81 councillors and 14,000 staff. It also tells me that it has a budget of £235 million. Not suffice with wasting taxpayers’ money, they want to rub in the scale of what they squander.

No doubt, Gordon Brown sees all this as part of his fiscal stimulus package. I say it’s time to strangle the squishy fish and take an axe to these practices.