More news drifts in about this copper from Sheffield who doesn’t know where Easton is that’s been put in charge of marketing at the city council on a salary of just £140k a year.
A reader writes:
Why does Bistol City Council employ a deputy chief executive on £150k a year if he doesn’t read emails or any reports? It almost makes you nostalgic for Terry Wagstaff. At least he took the time to read reports and spoke from a basis of experience and understanding!
But why bother with experience and understanding when you can get someone to squander hundreds of thousands of pounds on complete and utter self-serving nonsense of no consequence to anyone?
Because today we learned that this deranged copper has now employed a personal communications guru by the name of Mark Fletcher. (Any news on sightings most welcome)
I wonder how much this latest peculiar escapade is costing the council?
But money well spent isn’t it? Just as the copper’s reputation deservedly crashes to near zero we learn he has paid good money for a Counts Louse superannuated communications fuckwit to manage the process for him. Ho, ho!
Maybe the copper would be better off with a plumber to fix the leaks?
The Blogger’s also learned that the council has now decided to employ headhunters – on a fat fee naturally – to search for a new Communications Director. None of the short listed candidates were apparently good enough to “reflect well on me,” the copper recently told a group of sniggering officers.
We’ve also been told the copper’s convinced that if they get the communications right, people will start to love the council. So prepare for an onslaught of rubbish public sector”communications” then.
Because, of course, we’re all so fucking stupid we’re not going to notice the third rate services the copper is actually providing to us at our expense once those crappy glossy leaflets start coming through the door and his communications man Mark starts delivering his flowery little press releases to the local press are we?
Does the copper not realise we’re Bristolians? Therefore we don’t have shit for brains like he does. Can someone just sack this money wasting plonker now please? For all our sakes.
More court news tomorrow …
So far a book Managing Communication in Local Government, “The central idea of this text is that PR skills will be an essential management tool in the new style of local government, in the late 1990s, for all managers. Each chapter takes the form of an analysis of theory, a consideration of this in the management context, together with several case studies and exercises. The chapters deal with: PR thinking; strategic thinking; dealing with the media; trading in the credibility marketplace; and persuasion, personal positioning and personal communication skills.”
I found a fantastic piece of his work in Salford, its a hoot!
http://services.salford.gov.uk/solar_documents/ECSR010702D.DOC
I’ve never understand Council’s trying to sell themselves like a private sector organisation. Companies do it to raise there profile, its impossible for the Council to raise their profile above the average half way doing a good/acceptable job mark. Their the FFFing Council after all and with public service comes public scrutiny, they can always improve, so should live with it and show people they are actually listening by doing something about it.
The private sector does marketing to do more business and make more profit. I’m starting to suspect that the Council need to lose the top end corporate structure, releasing the funding to actually improve services in noticable way. Instead they are simply trying to convince us they are doing a good job through media spin, which as already pointed out is actually impossible for a public body!
yes bigwok, what they can not get their tiny brains around is tobe seen as a good authority you just have to do the jobs the authority is charged to do well.
All the rest is just bollocks.
No! No! No! Get with the epistemological relativity maan. Perception is all. Reality isn’t what it is. Reality is what you think it is. Reality is what you can persuade others to believe that it is. Money isn’t boring stuff like food, clothes, or housing, money is big glamorous numbers whirling in cyberspace. Water isn’t water now, it’s Virtual Water. Fill in the rest …
Here’s some necromancers in action:
http://tinyurl.com/q3byqd