News begins to filter through about the arrangements for recruiting the council’s new mega-bucks chief executive . . .
And it appears that the remaining chief officer crew – selflessly led by hopeless-case finance chief Carew “spread sheets are for wimps” Reynell – have been very busy putting together their own self-serving and typically farcical recruitment process proposal for councillors on the Human Resources Committee to rubber stamp next Thursday.
The main lesson, it seems, these senior officers have taken from the whole Gurney non-achievement fiasco – where a dodgy old Tory bureaucrat with a dubious track record was parachuted in from the shires on a wage of £150k to “transform” the city council – is that we didn’t pay him enough money!
So their new proposal seems to be to parachute yet another dodgy old Tory bureaucrat with a dubious track record in from the shires to “transform” the city council and pay them a wage of £180k a year instead!
Brilliant. It worked so well last time, we’ll do it all again but spend even more money!
Then of course – despite an apparently large, multi-million pound, state-of-the-art human resources department – there’s absolutely nobody currently employed at the council capable of organising the recruitment process necessary to obtain this new £180k a year joke figure.
Instead the senior officers have already gone ahead – without bothering to consult anybody elected – and employed a company of corporate ‘headhunters’ – Rockpools – on a retainer of £70k to run their new recruitment process for them.
These huge and largely pointless recruitment costs, combined with the proposed increase in wages for the new chief exec, are currently being calculated as costing us, the taxpayer, over £36k EXTRA a year!!!
However you can expect costs to rise considerably further than this when the tier of officers below this new Chief Exec – including Reynell and the chief officer crew who have devised this absurd scheme – start demanding pay rises to maintain a fair “pay differential” with their new boss.
How long, then, will we have to wait before we see across-the-board 20% pay rises for the rest of Bristol’s senior management team?
This bollocks is of course happening while ordinary council workers are being offered a pay cut in real terms this year and many other low-paid council workers find their shift allowances and overtime payments being ruthlessly cut. All of this courtesy of the very same Human Resources Committee that’s going to dish out these fat cat executive no-strings pay packages to people with substantial track records of stupidity, incompetence and failure.
Meanwhile the ultra expensive head-hunters, Rockpool, have already been beavering away working on a job description for our new Chief Exec. It’s full of all the usual meaningless local government waffle, buzz words and jargon that’s not really worth the effort of boring people here with. This new boss will:
Proactively support the Leader and Cabinet in the formulation of customer focussed and deliverable objectives, values and strategic policies
Provide inspiring leadership to the City Council, promoting a customer-focused, high performance and accountable culture
Ensure the City Council’s capacity and in particular its structure is ‘fit for purpose’
Blah, fucking, blah, fucking blah, blah, blah.
However the one thing not required by Rockpools of this new bureaucrat is any local knowledge whatsoever. Which kind of gives the game away about what they’re really after and why they’re prepared to pay so much money.
The reality is it’s all about getting some self-interested bastard of an identikit bureaucrat to run an indentikit authority working to an identikit central government diktat to produce an identikit city.
And let’s face it, it’s a lot easier to run dual carriageways through neighbourhoods you’ve never heard of and don’t care about; it’s a lot easier to turn a blind eye to failing schools when you don’t where they are; it’s a lot easier to run-down services for people you’ve never met nor are ever likely to meet; it’s a lot easier to build on “low quality green space” you’ve never been to; it’s a lot easier to shrug your shoulders at a public transport system you’ve never used and will never have to use; it’s a lot easier to take a zero tolerance attitude to people you’ll never meet and it’s a lot easier to demolish buildings and history when you are ignorant of it all anyway.
The pair of councillors from the council’s Human Resources Committee who’ll be personally responsible for agreeing to this nonsense on Thursday are the supposed firebrand trade unionists John Bees and Steve Comer.
So sit back, take it easy and watch this pair of gormless cunts unquestioningly hand over £180k a year to some undeserving bullshit artist while their own supposed rank and file trade unionist comrades at the council continue to get right-royally shafted.
As for the rest of us . . . Well we have no say at all.
This really does beggar belief.
“Barrow” Gurney was a totally hopeless twat and they’re actually going to pay some other non-Bristolian even more to run down our services?
And they can’t even recruit this person in-house? Jeez.
Why the bloody hell do we need a Chief Executive anyway? What do they actually do? What value do these people bring to Bristol?
Fuck all value is the simple answer to that.
Gurney was nigh-on invisible at BCC and was not only a waste of £150,000, he was also a sad waste of skin.
How can Bristolians stop this madness?
Invisible eh? How do you know bigmouth? Or are you in there walking to corridors, hoping, just hoping to catch sight of him to fuel your sad little mind?
Madness? I really think there are bigger problems in the country, if not the world. Perhaps open your eyes and realise that just how much the CX of BCC gets paid and how he/she is recruited, pales in comparison to the wastage and financial mismanagement that goes on in the private sector and indeed in other poorly run local authorities and publci sector organisations. Gurney’s old home for example, POrtsmouth City council – two rounds of recruitment took palce before they recruited teh ex CX of Oxford. A woman who, in her short time there, ‘restructured’ the organisation causing huge job losses and mistrust. Was the cause of at least 4 unfair dismissals and harrasment tribunals and then proceeded to just up and leave prompting yet another round of recruitment at tax payers money. A little perspective please….
You really don’t get it do you?
You seem to have developed a fetish for defending people who have failed whilst being handsomely remunerated.
On this particular forum I couldn’t give a toss about hedge fund managers/private sector wasteage blah blah blah. That’s not what is being discussed here. It’s the rubbish record of the outgoing Chief Exec of BCC, namely one Nicholas Gurney.
If you can’t get your thick head around something as simple as that, then there’s very little hope for you, is there?
By fawningly defending this idiot by pointing out mismanagement in “other poorly run authorities and private sector organisations” you really are damning him with very faint praise indeed.
And for your information, I’m writing as a concerned and pissed off Bristolian, not as a current or ex disgruntled employee of BCC.
What happens in Portsmouth about restructuring and job losses drone drone drone…. is of no consequence to Gurney’s lamentable record, here, in Bristol.
Are you his wife/girlfriend/boyfriend/lover? If so you appear to have inherited the congenital idiocy that has stained his tenure.
No but it sounds like perhaps you’ve been spurned by him at some point the way you harp on.
Rather than focusing you stranegly obsessive Bristolian rants on man, is it beyond your comprehension that there may be *gasp* other fcators whihc could have affected the city you love? Perchance there could be *something* Gurney isn’t to blame for? Infrstrcture, mismanagement by central government, John Prescott the *elected* officials (who by the way, although paid less are a far more wasteful resource), the tories, Tony Blair, Bin Laden, the McCanns? The list goes on…
It’s just so sad to see bright opinionated people get so bogged down in tiny detail and focus their energies on people who, in the four years they have been in ‘power’ couldn’t have possibly have wreaked the kind of havoc you’re accusing them of. Maybe time to share the blame or open your eyes a little?
If the chief executive is so marginal and powerless what’s the point in paying them a wage that gives the impression that they’re going to make a difference? We’re told we must pay these wages to get the best. Why bother if they have no power? We might as well get the mediocre for £40k if they can’t make any difference.
According to you we’re wasting our money anyway.
I don’t think you should pay them £130k, I’m not sure I’ve said that have I?
But I’d repeat my point that it’s not Gurney or even BCC who dictate the NATIONAL pay structure for local government officers, it’s a wider issue that has very little to do with the CX, the city or you for that matter – so there is very little he or you can do about it.
Mimi, never worked for Gurney, never will. Never been “spurned” by him. However, I have suffered his incompetence and been amazed by the barefaced cheek and outrageous lies of his resignation letter.
So, the Chief Exec of Bristol City Council is guilt-free is he? St. Nick can’t possibly be held to account for four years of heroic incompetence and underperformance. Christ, I shudder to think about what passes for success in your line of work.
Obsessive Bristolian rants eh? Well yes, I’m a Bristolian, unlike your good self and yes I enjoy a good rant, especially against failed public servants who lie about their achievements. Obsessive? No, I’ve got plently going on in my life, thanks very much, unlike you I suspect, as you seem to spend an indecent amount of time defending the outgoing Chief Exec of a city that you don’t reside in and clearly know precious little about.
No, I won’t be sharing the blame for Nick’s failures. My working day is spent ensuring that blood and tissues reach patients in need on time and in the right quantities. I’m pretty good at my job, if I wasn’t sick people wouldn’t get transfused. I also get paid fuck all for doing it, but for me it’s not about money.
Gurney is charged with running Bristol City Council for £150k per annum, plus excellent benefits. He’s done a rubbish job. Please feel free to come down here and verify the facts.
No blame to be attached to me, or I suspect most others criticising Gurney’s record.
You can ramble on about other factors contributing to Bristol’s failing public services as much as you like, but the buck stops, or should have stopped, with Gurney.
Even the execrable First Great Western had the good grace to remove their failing MD, Alison Forster, today for her company’s diabolical performance. The same has not been done to Gurney and to rub salt into the wound, he’s lied through his teeth about his achievements.
You can carry on talking out of your arse about a subject that you clearly know nothing about as long as you like, Mimi.
But the bottom line is, it is out of your arse that you are talking.
At least, i suspect she has a nice arse, rather than an arse for a face like you.
You’re all a bunch of idiots with too much time to wate on blogs like this. pathetic.
Well, what the hell are you doing on here then Peephole?
I’m on Paternity Leave – shouldn’t you be doing some work? Or are you yet another gravy-trainer who sits around doing sod all on the public purse except surf the internet and licking management arse.
I’d like to know, oh brown-tongued one.
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