I watched the first two episodes of BBC's 'Rome' at the weekend whilst recovering from a tooth extraction and stomach virus. Much of it resembled what is seemingly happening down at County Hall. The Romans had something called 'decimation' - take out one in ten of the enemy ringleaders after they won; our local Tories seem to prefer a much more exacting and punitive 'octo-decimation' of anyone who ran services for the previous administration. As I understand it, they will complete this week the removal of four of the five Directors they started with on May 8th, together with another very senior officer. And then there was one.......
How much this is all going to cost the Council Tax paper is of course one question? Another is - where is the principle of non-politicisation of senior local government officers in all of this ? It is just not healthy to cast aside so much experience the way they are doing at a time of great change for staff.
What with Strategic 'noses in the trough' Partnering for central services, PFI (Private Fingers in the till Initiatives) for Highways, proposed integration of our adult social services with the financial mystics from the local heath trusts, and the visit to the Island last week of some organisation called SERCO (Sod Education, lets get Rich Cwik Organisation) to look at privatising education support services, it is beginning to feel like the Roman republic just before Caesar crossed the Rubicon. And we will all learn in the BBC 'Rome' episodes to come what happened to Rome once Caesar and his successors became emperor. It wasn't nice, it wasn't edifying, and it certainly wasn't democratic !
Fortunately it won't be 500 years to this decline and fall........
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
No comments:
Post a Comment