Are you serious: easyCouncils?

I read an interesting article in the Guardian today (http://www.guardian.co.uk/politics/2009/aug/27/tory-borough-barnet-budget-airline) about the Tory run Barnett council who have announced they are to attempt to adopt the business model of low-budget airlines such as easyJet and Ryanair in a bid to cut 'excessive' costs. Now, despite my political persuasion being of the left, I'm quite open to saving money, cutting waste, and increasing efficiency when it is needed and when it does not make ordinary people worse off.

There are multiple ways Barnet council propose to cut costs - and they're the predictably Tory ways. There is great talk of 'out-sourcing' (privatising to you and me) certain services in order to cut Barnet's '3,500 strong directly employed workforce'. Other ideas include things such as reducing the size of waste bins to 'minimise the cost of rubbish collection'. Another great idea is allowing people to pay "a small fee" (or effectively a tax) in order to have their requests for planning permission resolved more quickly. Other proposals include giving older people more of 'a say' in how money on their care is spent, which is either a democratic thing to do or a way of deflecting blame when things inevitably go bottoms up, depending on how you look at it!

Now, these proposals are a dangerous example of cost cutting through attacking public services rather than making services cheaper, faster, and more efficient. I detest privatisation because with it always comes the usual collapse of customer services and huge profits for fat cats instead of modest profits for the government which can then be re-invested in the business. I am not so naive as to propose nationalisation is a perfect answer - but let's be fair - the quality of customer service is pretty similar regardless of whether I'm talking to the council services or a private company, despite what the Tories repeatedly say. The methods of business I prefer are pretty obvious - nationalisation, co-operatives and small businesses in a mixed economy, working together to cut costs just like the Italian textile industry has successfully had to do in the face of competition from the might of Chinese cheap labour. These Tory proposals of more and more privatisation will only lead to a degrading of public services which will cost less but be of lower quality. This will only hurt the ordinary people who need those services.

The idea of cutting down the size of your bin in order to save on the cost of rubbish collection is an interesting one - but again it is only going to hit working families harder. Coming from a household of five where our rubbish collection for a standard sized wheelie bin comes once every two weeks, I can say that this is totally undesireable. Whilst the system we currently have in Doncaster is just about (but barely) manageable, I know that we could not manage if our bin was half or even three quarters of the size it is now. Perhaps a better proposal would have been to have different sized bins for different sized houses? As a household of one inevitably creates less rubbish than a house of five, and so a smaller bin would reduce the costs of land fill - as this is the only area in which money can feasibly be saved. It doesn't matter if you have 1,000 big bins or 1,000 small ones, they still have to be collected in the same way using the same routes, which costs the same amount each week or fortnight.

The other main proposals I have mentioned are simply ridiculous! Why should a wealthy housing company be able to pay a tax to rush through his planning proposals ahead of a single or small group of individuals running a small business or a family who needs more space for their children who cannot afford even such a 'modest fee'? A money making machine under the auspices of Tory cost-cutting and saving money? Who'd have thought it?

Another aim is giving people more of a choice in public services - with the example of old peoples services. Democratic and noble? I think not. Cutting services to the point where old people have to make a choice between two or three rubbish options allows the council to cut costs and deflect the blame for poor choices onto the people, rather than taking criticism themselves. Whilst is is a seemingly noble idea, it is easily open to abuse. The council should be making these bold steps themselves and making the decisions they were elected to make - and making sure they are good decisions.

It seems the Tory Barnet council has missed an opportunity to make real savings which do as little damage to services as possible, in favour of bigger savings through a gimmick in which the only losers are the people of Barnet.