MY mole at county hall tells
me that council leader
David Whalley’s estimate
that there will be up to 300 jobs
lost with the implementation of
the Unitary Authority is wildly
inaccurate.
In fact they tell me that it is
more likely to be over 400 people
who will be going. In the
meantime, I’m also being told that
the chief executive has been
awarded a pay rise by the joint
implementation committee of 30
per cent. This would take her
wage from £170,000 to £200,000 and
chief officers from £120,000 to
£140,000.
Now I’m sure we’ll be told that
these kind of increases are
necessary to attract the right sort
of candidate, but try telling that
to the poor “schmucks” who are
losing their jobs.
I’m sure these huge wage
increases in a time of financial
struggle are a great comfort to
them.

The University of Exeter has
just announced that it is
officially naming the first
building completed at its
Tremough campus in Penryn
after the author Daphne du
Maurier.
Built as part of the first phase
of the development of the
Tremough Campus, which the
University of Exeter shares with
University College Falmouth, the
so-called Daphne du Maurier
building houses the campus
library as well as the University’s
Camborne School of Mines and
Centre for Ecology and
Conservation.
The press release accompanying
the announcement states the
name was suggested by University
of Exeter academics, who say it
reflects the local and international
ambitions of the University in
Cornwall.
Now, excuse me, but the last
time I looked neither Penryn nor
Falmouth had anything to do with
Daphne du Maurier, who lived up
the coast in Fowey.
These academics in their ivory
towers would be better off looking
at the history of Penryn, where
there are plenty of important
historical figures to choose from.
Sons of Penryn include
Lieutenant John Pasco. At the
Battle of Trafalgar in 1805 he was
the signal’s officer on Nelson’s
flagship HMS Victory. He ran up
the famous “England expects...”
signal.
There is also international
traveller Peter Mundy (1597-1667)
whose diaries and journals are
with the British Museum and the
Bodleian Library following his
travels around France, Spain the
Mediterranean, India, China and
the East Indies. He was the last
person from Penryn ever recorded
as seeing a live Dodo, that is until
the academics from the university
put their heads above the parapet!
Or we could even name the
building after some of Penryn’s
more recent sons, councillors John
Ashwin or Len Brokenshire for
instance who both dedicated their
lives to the service of their
beloved town.
And where did I find all this
information so easily? Why from
the excellent Penryn town guide
published by the town council of
course. Perhaps these academics
should have looked here as well
before coming up with such a daft
idea.

A disabled motorist contacted
me this week after being
given a ticket for parking
in a loading bay. Despite putting
his disabled card in the window
he returned to find, as he termed
it, that his car had been
“nobbled”.
A fair cop you might say, but the
74-year-old who has had two major
operations for bowel cancer claims
he had parked to “load” his car
with shopping after helping his
wife in Iceland.
Now I’m not prepared to argue
the ins and outs of whether or not
he was right or wrong.
What did amuse me however
was the police warning he was given. On it was written: “Not ALOUD to park in loading bay.”

A Cornish newspaper that is struggling to arrest rapidly declining sales devoted acres of space last week to an investigation into cocaine use in the county.
An unlucky reporter was sent to scour public lavatories for evidence of the drug and, surprise, surprise, he found traces of it almost everywhere he went.
Packet readers will, of course, not be surprised by this revelation. We have been reporting widespread local drug abuse for years and have even published photographs of hypodermic needles left in public places by addicts.
Drug abuse is, in fact, so widespread that the back room in one popular Cornish night club is known as Boots by many of the regulars.
I suppose the only surprise to me about the newspaper’s investigation was that traces of cocaine were found in the loos at Marks and Spencer and the National Maritime Museum in Falmouth.
I’ve always thought of M&S customers as little old ladies with blue rinsed hair who shop for new knickers but I suppose I’m a little behind the times. The store has, after all, had an expensive marketing makeover in recent years and obviously now attracts a different kind of clientele. As for the maritime museum ... well, what can I say? Men in anoraks snorting coke? Whatever next!
Oh yes, there was one other surprise: the fact that traces of cocaine were found on toilet seats, implying that users kneel on grubby floors and sniff the drug from a place close to where another person has been evacuating his bowels.
Now this is depravity! Drug abuse is bad enough but the lack of personal hygiene is truly disgusting.

*****

I look forward to requesting copies of the phone bill for County Hall for the week leading up to December 12.
I suspect that call charges will be at a record high and that 0870 2424601 will be revealed as a much-used number.
This is the number adopted by the Big Lottery Fund to record support for the Eden Project’s bid for a £50 million handout. Calls to the number cost 10p a minute from a BT landline and even higher from a mobile.
The reason I suspect to find the number showing repeatedly on County Hall’s next phone bill is that all staff were encouraged to ring it.
I have been sent a copy of an internal e-mail circulated to staff which says: “Dear colleague. The phone lines are now open! Eden’s next great phase, the Edge, is one of four finalists for the biggest prize in TV history, the Big Lottery Fund’s ‘The People’s £50 million contest,’ being decided by a public vote this weekend. You can vote now by phone for the Edge in the People’s £50m contest. Call 0870 2424601 ....”
Apart from the cost to the taxpayer, doesn’t this smack a little of vote rigging? The idea was surely that the public should be asked to give their unbiased view on where the cash should go? I’m sure it was never intended or imagined that a local authority would use its might to drum up support at public expense.
I don’t know how many telephones there are at County Hall, but it probably runs into thousands. Multiply that by 10p a time and this was no doubt a costly exercise.
As you might expect from a County Hall exercise, the plan went pear shaped: the money was won by an up-country project!

I’m sure you’ve heard the old saying “it’s not what you know, it’s who you know.”
Your CV matches the advertised job description to the letter, your interview goes well and you’re led to believe that you are the perfect candidate. Then, a week later, a letter drops on your doormat telling you that on this occasion your application has, unfortunately, not been successful.
You then hear that the job has gone to a spotty faced juvenile who left school at 16 with two D-grade GCSEs. Why? It has nothing to do, of course, with the fact that the successful applicant’s father plays golf with the managing director. No, that’s a complete coincidence!
This sort of thing does not, of course, happen in the public sector. Local authorities and government departments are paragons of propriety when it comes to ensuring that jobs are filled strictly on merit. Or are they?
A team of external “auditors” who spent a week at County Hall examining how Cornwall county council operates found evidence to the contrary.
“Recruitment and retention practices are perceived by many staff to be inconsistently applied and not compliant with the council’s stated polices and practice,” said their report. “We heard complaints of a tokenistic approach with an undue level of interference and intervention by senior managers not involved in the process, for example sliding temps into permanent positions or processes geared towards favoured individuals.”
What a disgrace! It seems that bureaucrats who enjoy salary levels that other mortals can only dream about are conspiring to keep plum jobs reserved strictly for a “favoured” few.
I can just about forgive a private employer for doing favours when filling vacancies. After all, it’s their own money. If they employ the wrong person and he or she makes a cock-up, it’s the proprietor who personally pays for the mistake.
But bureaucrats have a duty to safeguard the interests of every single taxpayer. There is no room for favouritism of any kind. The best person should always get the job and the revelation that this is not always the case is a scandal of major proportions.
I hope councillors demand a full and open inquiry into the evidence gathered by the review team who produced this report. I don’t know what is meant by “favoured individuals” but if it turns out to be friends or family, heads need to roll.
The problem might be finding “senior managers” who are not implicated by the report to carry out the investigation.

*****

The same review also criticises the council for something that I have highlighted on numerous occasions.
“A number of commentators describe the quality of reports as poor, often difficult to read, too long and not succinct.”
Reports, say the review team, should be “written in accordance with plain English principles and have clear proposals or recommendations.”
Hallelujah! It’s not just me – unless I’m one of the “commentators” they refer to!
But I could have used even plainer English to describe Cornwall county council reports: they are boring, pompous and garbled.
Some of the reports, in fact, are so incomprehensible that they might just as well be written in Cornish.

The gravy train has left the station and has already made its first stop – a plush Cornish hotel where councillors enjoyed the first of many publicly-funded beanfeasts.
The train drivers are a bunch of county councillors and they have invited along a dozen district councillors to be their oily rags.
They are heading for a place called Utopia – a land of milk and honey where money grows on trees.
The train will, of course, hit the buffers before it reaches its planned destination. But by that time Cornish taxpayers will be much the poorer and the deluded councillors will realise – too late to do anything about it – that they have once again been used as puppets to help empire-building bureaucrats boost their power and wealth.
The meeting at the Headland Hotel in Newquay last Thursday set into motion the long journey towards the formation of a single council for Cornwall. Carrick, Kerrier, Penwith, Restormel, North Cornwall and Caradon councils will be abolished. By 2009 there will be just one power-wielding super authority in Cornwall with 20,000 staff on the payroll and an annual budget of £800 million.
With big stakes like this to play for, is it any wonder that expense is no object as the councillors get to work? Why bother using one of the many spare committee rooms at County Hall in Truro when there’s a palatial, four-star clifftop hotel – where a room for the night can cost over £300 – available on your doorstep?
I can’t tell you how much this first “getting to know each other” meeting cost Cornish taxpayers because the county council hasn’t given me the answer I requested. All they would tell me was that it was considered “more effective to work outside the committee rooms within council premises” and “the Headland Hotel provides an ideal venue where this important work can take place.”
What a load of cobblers – and so typical of the attitude we have come to expect from a council that wastes our money on bottled water for staff and a community newspaper that nobody will read while at the same time cutting essential services.
I suggest all councillors read a copy of the “Corporate Assessment Peer Review” – an audit of the council which has just been published. The report notes: “There is a danger that the new unitary council itself is seen as the answer to the issues facing the current council. The range and scale of these issues is far too significant to wait or be ignored until the new council emerges, and the single most important issue facing the council is the culture of denial and lack of ownership at a senior level.”
Tough words, especially when they come from an audit panel consisting of councillors and bureaucrats from outside Cornwall. But the Cornish bureaucrats have nothing to fear from the peer review. One of the recommendations is: “Review salaries for leading posts to ensure they are competitive nationally to recruit high calibre people.”
What’s the betting that this recommendation is seized upon with great enthusiasm, even though our Liberal Democrat rulers have only recently given huge pay increases to senior officials and themselves.
As I’ve said before, and I’ll repeat again now, by the time the new unitary council is in place local government costs in Cornwall – especially for staff – will have shot through the roof. And as local taxes go up to pay for it all, councillors will, of course, blame it all on the government of the day.
Sound familiar?

There’s only one thing worse than an over-zealous council official – and that’s an over-zealous council official wearing a uniform.
Thank God, I hear you say, that we don’t have creatures like that in this part of the world. Well, I’m afraid I have some bad news for you – they’re on the way!
Uniformed officers employed by local councils will be patrolling the streets of Cornwall from May next year handing out tickets to anyone parked illegally.
Some of you might say it’s about time something was done to clamp down on idiot drivers who cause traffic chaos, and to an extent I would agree.
But what worries me is this: Cornwall county council says that there will be a “major difference” between the new “civil enforcement officers” and the now obsolete traffic wardens who were employed by Devon and Cornwall Police.
The traffic wardens, says the council, were allowed a certain amount of discretion when deciding to carry out enforcement whereas the new “civil enforcement officers” will be working within a set of stringent guidelines.
In other words, the council will be employing a bunch of “jobsworths” who will become hated by the public at large for not being able to exercise a little common sense when deciding whether or not to “nick” somebody.
Traffic wardens have never been the most popular bunch of people but, on the whole, I have always found them courteous and reasonable.
If they caught you as you jumped back in your car after stopping on the yellow lines for 30 seconds to post a letter, they would normally just give you a slap on the wrist rather than a £60 fine.
Just imagine how intolerable life will be if the new council robots catch you! “You’re nicked,” says the little man with the short moustache beneath his nose, and his black hair trailing over one side of his forehead. “But officer, I only stopped for 30 seconds to drop off my 89-year-old mother outside the doctor’s surgery, because she can’t manage the walk from the car park.”
Robot: “I don’t care about your pathetic excuses. I don’t have any discretion in these matters. I’m only obeying orders. You’re nicked.”
The council says that anyone who disputes a parking ticket can make representations to processing staff “who will take into account the evidence provided by the motorist as well as the guidance provided.”
But why make life so complicated? Why not just put a little more trust in the people who issue the tickets in the first place and avoid creating a layer of bureaucracy in the background?
The council denies that parking tickets will be used as a way of making money. “A small surplus may be made in the first year,” says senior councillor Matt McTaggart, “but in subsequent years a loss is made as costs increase...”
But why plan to make a loss? I can’t see anyone objecting to our council tax being subsidised out of the fines paid by inconsiderate drivers who flagrantly break the law, so long as reasonable, fair and sensible people are employed to issue the tickets.
Instead, the council is creating a Traffic Taliban, which I suspect we will have to pay for out of ever more extortionate local tax increases. Why am I so surprised?

I have been sent a cutting from an Irish newspaper with a suggestion that it might serve as an example of a more robust style of reporting that Cornish journalists – including me – should follow.
I thought, in fact, that I was a pretty outspoken chap with a reputation for pulling no punches, but I have to say that Irish newspaper columnist Terry McGeehan makes me look like a pussy cat.
The column forwarded to me is headed “These gobshites must go” and it names the “organised gang of heartless, gutless, spineless and brainless incompetents and cowards” who – among a long list of other misdeeds – put the lives of Irish people at risk in dodgy hospitals.
The Irish Prime Minister was lambasted for “failing miserably to give us the so-called ‘envy of Europe’ health service that was promised to us three elections ago.”
Well, I say. I have called politicians a few things in my time, but I have never dared to label them as “gormless gobshites masquerading as the government ...”
Maybe I should. Maybe if newspaper columnists like myself named and shamed those responsible for mismanaging our public services more often, Britain wouldn’t be languishing so far behind other countries in the World Health Organisation’s league of healthcare systems.
It’s astonishing to note that Spain – which was regarded as almost a Third World country at the time the British NHS was first launched – is now further up the healthcare league than us.
Everyone in Cornwall knows that our local hospital services don’t even rank well against others in the UK, so God knows how they compare with the rest of the world.
We have superb doctors and nurses in Cornwall but they are starved of the resources to run a decent service. As I have pointed out before, Cornish healthcare managers still haven’t complied with government promises to stop putting male and female patients side by side in the same wards. Older patients in particular find it distressing and humiliating to have to lay in bed next to strangers of the opposite sex and it is disgraceful that the Royal Cornwall Hospitals Trust continues to stubbornly ignore Government advice to end this practice.
I am prompted to hark on about this again not just because I have seen how an Irish columnist deals with incompetence, but because of an incident that happened in a mixed sex ward at the Royal Cornwall Hospital on Saturday night.
A male patient went berserk in the middle of the night, knocking over medical equipment and terrifying other sick people, including an elderly lady who had undergone major surgery just 24 hours earlier.
Security guards had to be called to restrain the patient and remove him from the ward but not before lives were put at risk and other sick people were left in a highly distressed state.
It is, of course, appalling that medical staff who are employed to cure the sick are so often faced these days with violence from the very people they are trying to help but it is even worse for fellow patients.
Just imagine how awful it must have been for this elderly lady – confined to bed, tubes protruding from every orifice and wires connecting her to electronic gadgets – as she watched the madman in the bed next to her run riot.
I’m not really sure what a gobshite is – my dictionary doesn’t list the word – but I’m convinced it’s an appropriate description of the person responsible for continuing to put men and women side by side in the same wards in Cornish hospitals.