Leith Sucks.net

Would anyone who attended the citywide meeting Friday 28 September (morning) in Craigroyston Community Centre, where Neighbourhood managers tried to sketch out the strategy for their survival and the rationalisation or your job and Community Learning and Development, get in touch with us on either hotmail or yahoo accounts please, but not on Council connected computers. That is for your security. You know you are being Rosendaled – doing nothing is no longer an option, vital community services are at risk!   

Couldn’t agree more with your comments on the Fraudster regarding the scandalous programme to ‘Rosendale’ Nursery, Primary, Secondary schools and Community Centres to meet the so called overspend of  £13.5 million in the Children and Families budget created by none other than the Fraudster. 

Your nursery, school or community centre could be packed, and many in these proposals were, and the Fraudster Rosendale wants the city Council to agree to close you down to meet an HQ (built recently at a staggering cost of £80 million) created financial black hole, that to date has gone unexplained to the parents, children and elderly people who use these local council facilities. It’s paradoxical that they now want to close successful local facilities on account of a state of the art unsuccessful staggeringly expensive Head Quarters or Rosendale Towers.

Fail the intelligence tets (oops that’s me in)

You have not been rationalised, you have BEEN Rosendaled.

It appears to all, including the bewildered shop stewards in Unison, that Rosendale has outflanked them with his proposals to close Community Centres. He has instructed his Neighbourhood managers to force their teams to find five representatives in each team (or suckers), it doesn’t matter that they are not in Unison, in fact it’s preferred that they are not, to break the Unison agreed position of not co-operating with any action that contributes or identifies savings and reductions in services. Some staff are feeling that they are being lent on very heavily by these unscrupulous managers who have no commitment to providing local services or protecting jobs, other than there own jobs of course. 

In addition, Unison Heavies lent on the Community Learning and Development Shop Stewards last week at the Council meeting when they were told they were not going to be allowed by Unison to present a case against closure of Community Centres and Services as it would make Community Learning and Development Managers look bad. These stewards left with their tails between their legs. Who is running this UNION anyway – certainly not the majority of its members? 

One of these heavies is none other than Mr Unison himself John Stevenson. Interestingly he has just returned from Unison’s National Conference in the summer where he was waxing lyrical about the latest motion to oppose Trident replacement in favour of local services and here he is in Edinburgh assisting Neighbourhood Management (Hard as Nails -  Christine Mackay) to ‘dismantle’ local community centres and services. Nice one John you hypocrite – by not standing up for these local services, members and local people you can guarantee that more people will resign from Unison and in the long term less people will be able to resist Trident. Think about this John, we are armed to the teeth with Trident but we do not have any jobs and there are no local community services left.

You ought to be ashamed of yourself – you are a disgrace to a UNION. You are taking the queens shilling, therefore do the right thing and get out of the UNION. You cannot serve two masters it’s the UNION or the WORKERS and local SERVICES – you can’t continue to have them both. Your position as Manager of Health and Social Care in North Edinburgh is now untenable with your role as Rosendale and Mackay’s lackie. Either you are a manager or you are a worker – you cannot continue to be their lackie!

We at Leithsucks have been applying ourselves diligently to the financial black hole, created by the senior council officials in children and families, and we have just a few observations to put to you. Why have the city council got a Chief Executive and a Director of Corporate Services? Is the Chief Executive Head of the council or not. If so, why do we also have a Director of Corporate Services? Who is in charge of whom? Is it not Mr Aitchison’s job to oversee all the departments in the Corporate end of the Council of which there are at last count 5 – City Development, Children and Families, Finance, Health and Social Care and Services to Communities? It appears to us that either Mr Aitchison does not have a proper role in the council, or he is just a highly paid figurehead, who defers to his director of Corporate Services, Mr Jim Inch. Either way it looks clear to us that there is very costly and unnecessary duplication of roles here and that either Mr Aitchison or Mr Inch are surplus to requirement. Mr Tom Aitchison is paid approximately £145,000 a year, this is minus his lift for his shambolic returning officer duties, and Mr Inch £110,000, quite scandalous really, don’t you think. 

The structure of the each of these council departments is almost identical. Take Children and Families for example, there is a director Gillian Tee who has a Head of Neighbourhood Services, Mike the FRAUDSTER ROSENDALE, but in addition, she also has five Neighbourhood Managers in the five city neighbourhoods. Why do we need a highly paid Head of Neighbourhood Services, who is based at Waverley Towers when we have five highly skilled and highly paid managers out in the neighbourhood? Unnecessary duplication. There are middlemen everywhere.

Check out the departments here; http://www.edinburgh.gov.uk/internet/Council/Council_Business/CEC_guide_to_council_departments and here www.egfl.net. This is a common pattern in all the five departments in this council. This is a common pattern in all the five departments in this council. 

We would strongly recommend that the Lib/Dems and SNP alliance take note of this example, in light of the financial crisis these officers created in this city, and call for an urgent review of all matters Corporate in this council. Do not think for a minute that these Corporate Fat Cats are going to have a viable rescue plan for schools and community centres up their sleeves. As usual they will be planning for that old gravy train, that they are all aboard, to keep rolling and the front-line services will be offered up as a means of filling the black hole they created through negligence, incompetence or just perhaps quite deliberately.  

ADDRESS THE UNNECESSARY DUPLICATION AT THE CORPORATE END OF THE COUNCIL AND YOU WILL ENCOURAGE THE OTHER EMPLOYEES IN THE FRONT-LINE SERVICES THAT YOU ARE SERIOUS ABOUT DELIVERING SERVICES AT COST TO THE PEOPLE OF EDINBURGH AND NOT PROVIDING UNNECESSARY JOBS FOR FAT CATS.    

LIB/DEMS AND SNP – S/HE WHO HESITATES IS LOST.           

ARE WE, THE COUNCIL TAX PAYER,  GOING TO GET A PROPER INVESTIGATION INTO THE CAUSE/S OF THIS FINANCIAL FIASCO OR DO THE CORPORATE FAILURES CONTINUE TO CREATE FINANCIAL HAVOC YEAR ON YEAR?
Proof positive of the destructive intentions of the Fraudster Rosendale and the other corporate failures in the Edinburgh City Council.  I have extracted, and included, the relevant section for you 3.36 and 5. Respectively of the report as headed, that will be presented to the next full council meeting – not the emergency meeting today. Note the arrogance clearly stated in the 3.36 recommendation, “CLD organisational review, must be approved and delivered in as short a timescale as is possible”  in order to allow Fraudster Rosendale and his fellow Corporate failures to make swinging cuts to the Cities Community Centres and staff with impunity. Why? And why must it be done in as short a timescale as possible?????? 

The SNP and LIB/DEMS are about to sleepwalk into yet another of Fraudster Rosendale’s public fiascos. Fraudster Rosendale as Strategic Planning Manager for the city failed to manage his budgets, under the Labour run Council. Now he wants to punish the users of Community Centres throughout the city to help fund his shortcomings or incompetence in managing the budget when he was Strategic Planning Manager. 

THE ONLY MEASURE FOR THE SNP AND LIB/DEMS THAT MUST BE APPROVED AND DELIVERED IN AS SHORT A TIMESCALE AS IS POSSIBLE IS THAT FRAUDSTER ROSENDALE MUST BE CLEARED OUT OF THIS COUNCIL AND A COMPETENT REPLCACEMENT FOUND – AND PLEASE NOTE THAT REPLACEMENT IS NOT CHRISTINE ‘HARD AS NAILS’ MACKAY.        

City of Edinburgh Council  Item 8.1 (b)   Report no. CEC/82/07-08/C&F 

Children and Families Department –Revenue Budget Monitoring – Month Four Position City of Edinburgh Council 20 September 2007.

Web-link - read the full council document here http://cpol.edinburgh.gov.uk/getdoc_ext.asp?DocId=101692 

Further Actions Recommended

3.36 It should be noted that any measures which can be delivered through this route are not sustainable and do not address the fundamental over-commitment of the Children and Families revenue budget. Sustainable long-term measures, examples of which are identified in this report, e.g. CLD organisational review, must be approved and delivered in as short a timescale as is possible. 

And 

5. Recommendations

the commissioning of organisational reviews in the areas of Community Learning and Development and the department’s management structure

Rumour has it that Gordon Ramsey has applied for the franchise in the centre café. Mr Ramsey has heard the Christine “Hard As Nails” MacKay has FCUKED up yet again, Gordon is adamant that given a few minutes with MacKay would solve the problem.

Reported in today’s Edinburgh Evening News
http://edinburghnews.scotsman.com/index.cfm?id=1464722007 
Capital builder in £300,000 swindle
An Edinburgh building firm boss is facing prison after admitting to conning a housing association out of more than £300,000. 

Interesting in so much as this builder is about to serve time for falsely obtaining £300,000. What is the difference between this builder and the Fraudster Rosendale? The Fraudster Rosendale is responsible for £400,000 missing from the Edinburgh’s Lifelong Learning Partnership accounts and he gets promoted by Jobs(on), before he retires, and a salary increase to boot. Justice comes swiftly to those who don’t have the right connections. Ain’t that right Fraudster? 

What about this for a good headline. Capital Education Chief in £400,000 swindle and the Council don’t want to know. Edinburgh Evening News get your hounds on to this story. It’s high time the senior council officials in Edinburgh were held to account by the Lib/Dems and SNP in the same way that this builder was properly pursued by Calico Housing Ltd. Perhaps then the hole in the council’s Children and Families budget that so far has gone unexplained or rationalised by Fraudster Rosendale will be properly investigated.

The well used café in the centre is closed. Maggie who successfully ran the café has decided to call it a day and gracefully bowed out on Wednesday 5 September after years of loyalty. To date there is no one to take over her position. We have been informed that Maggie told the management committee weeks ago about her decision.  Why has the committee left this situation vacant for so long? Is this another case of incompetence on behalf of the committee, or is there a hidden agenda?