“Councils, courts and conmen.....

http://tinyurl.com/262rgp7”

“I would put money on JVL leaving the city council in a couple of years with a fat payout and leaving things just the same for the residents who live here.”

“@shufti

I quite agree with your comments about people voting in the same load of incompetent people time and time again. I live in hope that "the penny will drop" and we will have a major change in the political makeup of the city council.”

“http://tinyurl.com/6luudau

http://tinyurl.com/6zhk97f

MAKE A STAND!”

“When people are getting hurt and trodden on then anyone with any compassion will react. But it seems from some on this page that the weak can go by the wayside as long as the few have their affluence. People like this squeal like little piggies if anything bad happens to them as if their life is worth more than those they have dismissed.
Cissie is a point in fact. There are no developers on board for that land as yet. The lady has lived there for practically all her life and she is 90 years old. The money from the sale of her home will go directly back onto the enforced care home fees. Surely, given this lady has capacity, the enforced conditions she finds herself in are illegal and tantamount to false imprisonment. But what the hey. Paul430 and his pals are the giants of this world and know what its all about. God help your souls.”

“I need an assistant worthy of £132,000 perannum.
Lets close a couple of care homes to fund it.

What a complete hogwash idea.”

“I have said it before, and I will say it again "people of Stoke-on-Trent" you voted for these clowns, what did you expect? some sense maybe or perhaps some joined up thinking?
I particularly like the comment "it has left us with a fairly significant shortfall in strategic capacity to drive the organisation forward" when has Stoke-on-Trent under this council ever been driven forward? we are mostly in reverse!!! and will be until the electorate come to their senses and vote them out, just don't hold your breath, it ain't gonna happen.”

“The terminology used here is quite strange ..... City Manager - City Executive etc ....
JvL - as he is known across the local authority - is the Chief Executive of City Council ... a vast sprawling organisation providing over 700 services to the fine people of the City.
He has now been in-place for two years ... and is frankly as frustrated as the rest of us at how slow progress is both in the Council - and in the big wide world outside.
So why do things take so long .... and why does he need an assistant ?
Rafts of bureacracy - that thankfully the current Government are stripping away after years of meddling.
A disorganised and inefficient workforce - many of whom have established little empires within the council that work in isolation.
A population - that per-head - place twice as many demands upon the Council as the national average.

What JvL - and Government in general - are trying to engender in people is self-reliance .... We will not do everything for you - house you, look after your children, and provide for your every need .... but we will create the environment for you to be able to do it yourself ...

If this takes JvL - or any other CEO - another 10 years ... then it will be worth it .... and if a few of the weak get slaughtered along the way (Council Officers and Public alike) then sorry ... but as several commentators keep suggesting .... 'welcome to the real world'”

“@77 Sparkie
You claim he's achieved a lot, and maybe you're right but not one of the accomplishments you describe is measurable or tied to specific actions by the city manager. Words like "Improved the council repairs service ......Sorted the allocations service to sort out the waiting list........Tried to sort out the enterprise zone in Etruria Valley, and continuing to sort it out .........Mandate for Change, improving the way that the council works........We've got a new shopping centre coming, worth hundreds of millions of pounds, which has to be good news.......

Just specifically what did he do and what metrics do you have to support your contention regarding the benefits accruing to the citizens of Stoke-on-Trent?
I think we should demand transparency and accountability from the city manager with clearly established goals and monthly progress reports to taxpayers.”

“Paul430 still keeps putting his faith in these stalwarts within the 1% of our society. Am I wrong in thinking that it was these very same people that he defends who actually destroyed the Global Economy and put millions world wide out of work. Every week we see his so called benefactors laying off more and more employees considerably damaging the local economies where they live because they will no longer have the amounts of disposable income they previously had. So local businesses can no longer rely on them to shop and their profits are reduced. Does he seriously think that these destructive "unique skills" will benefit our society? These unique skills have been used to get countries like Greece into their current situation. These unique skills have been applied consistently over the last two years, and where are they now? Worse off than before.

When I look at bankers I'm not particularly impressed. Where is the skill in gambling with other peoples money? Where is the skill in borrowing it from a central bank at about 2% interest and then lending it to people at inflated rates? That's skilful is it?

I do not decry the entrepreneurs who have built up their businesses from scratch over the years taking risks with their own money and I certainly support them equally as I support those on the minimum wage. I believe that many economies do not rely on massive global companies, but on the hundreds of thousands of small to medium enterprises and their employees. What I think that I understand about economics is that money needs to circulate by redistribution to all members of society giving them amounts of money to cover their needs and allow sufficient to buy other items and services.

I have learnt that If things need to change to bring about an improvement, first you have to stop doing those things that are giving the unsatisfactory performance. Unfortunately the banks have learnt one lesson from the current crisis -"we are too big to fail." Many of the people who got us into this mess are still in their jobs.So the assumption can be drawn that we can expect more of the same. In addition these people are not supporting those hundreds of thousands of SME's, they are not changing their greedy habits and they continually prove that their thought patterns are exactly the same.

How would I change them? Well it grieves me that they charge me exorbitant amounts for them to look after other peoples money. So I would ban the practice of being paid monthly. I would insist that people were paid weekly and in cash. This would ensure that the banks did not have so much of our money. This may also help to prevent the continued rise of those horrible payday loan sharking companies which are becoming prevalent.

If the banks are not lending money to the SME's I would charge councils to end contracts with billion pound global companies and those which are located outside of our city and invest in our local companies. This means that our local businesses could have contracts, dependant on their meeting agreed service level standards, and have the confidence to grow and in all probability employ more people.

I would certainly insist that no Council executive earned more than the average senior manager, which in the UK is about £70,000. I would also sack anyone that bought in consultants.

Paul430, the only reason that these people get what they do is because over the last 20 years or so these people have been sitting on each others compensation and remuneration boards and have voted each other these massive and undeserved salaries and bonuses. People fell for the rhetoric that we need to pay these kind of sums to keep them from being poached by other competitors. I really can't believe that the amount of times this happens really justifies such stupidity on behalf of shareholders. Let them go I say.”