Don't Blame the Council - you bet I will!

I am sure many of you will have seen the TV show or heard about it, Don't Blame the Council. What a mess. There a number of issues for me.

First who on earth signed this off to allow the Council to go and be filmed for this "fly on the wall" documentary, which is now being called a "mockumentary". Now with this "car crash" of a PR exercise some one high up obviously thought this was a good idea. They just thought, "O great we will be on tele and people will love us." They didn't look at the risk's involved in terms of what can go wrong. In the Press Office someone should have said this could be a great opportunity but things can go wrong, let's look at the risks involved. No one said hang on what message are we trying to say and will it be said in the right way? So which ever high ranking person, who signed this off, is incompetent and needs to go.

Next, and quite possibly more important, is forgot that this was allowed to be filmed but why have the Council been able to become this kind of organisation whereby it is OK to go home in the middle of your shift and then come back to clock off? Why is it that when you tell your manager about this he says - "Let's draw a line in the sand!" Anywhere else - there's the door don't let it hit you on the way out.

As a Council we have to not only look after the hard working staff, which many are, but look after the equipment. Then we get a Director of a dept riding around and messing about on a motorised grass mower, acting the clown. Where was the Health and Safety? Where was the respect for the equipment? Where was the respect for the job and the Council? Mind you this was the guy that sent an email out saying he was off on holiday when many had just lost their jobs, story here. Is this really the person to be running this multi-million pound dept? I know my answer.

Then with regards his dept and also trying to run this private business, Makerfield Group, how on earth can it make money. What was it 4 men, 1 supervisor and 2 trucks carrying out a job for 30 mins, collectively 2.5 man hours and then charge £15? That means to me that the taxpayers of Wigan are subsidising this loss making joke. They can't and shouldn't be trying to run a private business, it is obvious they can't run the Council never mind another company as well.

As a Wigan Councillor I am disgusted at what I saw and I have now put in a motion to the next Full Council meeting. This is first of all calling for an investigation on what is happening in this Council and what has happened with this TV show. Secondly, it calls for the Council to move away from this PR/ spin strategy and move to a culture of looking after the residents.

As we saw the Council was pushing their latest spin exercise, "The Deal". Millions have been spent on this and only 441 people have signed up to it. What a waste of yet more of hard earners tax payers money!

Finally, I call on the Leader of the Council, Cllr Peter Smith to resign, as he is obviously not the man for the job no more.