Yesterday at Council we debated the Council’s Corporate Plan and the Cabinet Workplan.
The latter is the Council’s priorities for the forthcoming year and as the official opposition we will be consistently scrutinising the performance of the Council against the priorities they have set down in the Workplan. The Corporate plan however is more of a box-ticking exercise and seems to essentially be a version of the Council’s Local Area Agreement targets (agreed with Government) with added flowery language. It also contains the most jargon-filled page I’ve ever seen in four years as a Councillor – and that takes some doing!
Unions Gloat, Residents Suffer
Now I don’t support the strike action and as a Councillor I can only apologise to local residents who have seen services – many of them essential - disrupted today and tomorrow. However it is one thing to go on strike, but to gloat and take great delight in the misery that the strike is causing is a different ball game altogether.
That unfortunately is exactly what the UNISON website is doing however. A grisly roll-call of schools, nurseries and services for the elderly which have been closed down due to the strike action. It’s an ugly spectacle.
I don’t believe that this strike is the right way forward but I know that the vast majority of those local government staff on strike today do not take that decision lightly. Most staff on the picket lines today – never mind the local residents hit hard by the strike – will be appalled by the language used by the UNISON hierarchy. Most staff are acutely aware of the knock-on problems of striking and use industrial action with regret. The UNISON leadership are striking with relish and they are letting their own members down at the same time.
Hat tip: ConservativeHome