Many young people are contemplating starting uni. The high-flyers should go, but are the also-rans likely to get much benefit from a low-status degree and eye-watering debt? Many will have received disappointing results today. Having already failed, is some odd degree at a "clearing" university the answer? No - you are doing the rapacious unis a favour rather than yourselves.
Labour has just increased tuition fees to £9,535 per year. At least the real dross won’t ever earn enough to pay their student loans back, although they have wasted three years of their lives.
An alternative? Get a job at a council - preferably one that is dominated by one political party. If you are a yes wo/man this is definitely the job for you.
If you follow some basic rules you are virtually unsackable no matter how useless you are. Ok, the pay is not fantastic to start with, but then you are probably not worthy of a better salary. Yet you will start clocking-up a good pension. And if you (a) join the council’s governing party, and (b) are prepared to break the law to “protect” the council and its councillors, and (c) are prepared to completely surrender independence of thought for a party “line”, you are quids in.
Even if you do fall foul of the regime you are likely to end up with a compensation payment and a reference provided that you sign a confidentiality agreement.
Whether you like it or not, you will be forced to pay an annual amount to a trade union but that in itself can lead to openings. Thanks to a bizarre thing called “facility time” [sic] you may get to be a union rep with your wages paid for by the taxpayer. You can get paid in full NOT to do your council job!
There are jobs out there. Despite the appalling productivity of council workers Labour thinks the answer is to employ more idlers. This is your chance.
Many councils are extremely lax at clamping down on the sickness absence running rampant throughout councils. Absenteeism is much higher than in the private sector. In one case we are aware of someone took ONE YEAR off with a simple broken wrist. In Sandwell (of which more anon) there was much back-slapping from the Council about its COVID performance, but when figures were released there had, in fact, been mass absenteeism. (Sandwell introduced Shirking From Home - SFH - in a big way at this time and one lucky employee got to enjoy regular shagging sessions with a councillor in the comfort of her own home.) And so you can also boost your annual holiday entitlement with occasional bouts of fictitious illness.
Don’t worry that you may have to trail into the Town Hall or some dismal concrete council HQ since SFH is now prevalent in many local authorities. Many council employees are now running side-hustles from home whilst allegedly “serving the public”.
And it gets better. Labour is pressing for council workers to do four days “work” for five days taxpayer-funded pay. South Cambridgeshire Council has already gone for it. If you have hobbies or interests and are a slacker you can have three days a week to indulge your passion but with a salary and a pension. If you do have a little bit of get-up-and-go then this provides ample opportunity for even more side-hustling. (Firefighters are wonderful capitalists and use their monopolistic powers to extract good pay whilst being famous adept at running second jobs or companies).
Because council employees are often so useless (or off sick) multimillion pound sums are spent on agency workers. This gives you two opportunities especially once you have gained a bit of experience. Firstly, you need not bust a gut at work since the taxpayer can be screwed to pay for agency workers to pick up your slack. Secondly, if you want a more flexible lifestyle you can do agency work yourself. Despite the gargantuan fees paid to recruitment agencies these folk are on a very good screw indeed. Many like Labour MP, Imogen Walker, became self-employed so as to minimise any tax liability whilst doing a "crony" non-job at dear old Sandwell.
As above, if you are wondering about the current level of pay consider that you might soon have to work only 4 days a week for it! Happy days (off).
Let’s look at a case study - Labour Sandwell in the West Midlands. This is one of the most corrupt councils in the land. It has been run as a one-party dictatorship for over half a century. The result is a sh*thole Borough at or near the bottom of most deprivation “leagues”.Google “The Sandwell Skidder” if you want to read the full horror story over the last decade or so, but we will touch on just a few examples.
Many Sandwell employees are family or friends of Labour Councillors. Nepotism and cronyism are both rife. A former disgraced political leader collected the leader’s allowance whilst living in north Derbyshire and actually working for Rotherham Council. (Incidentally, he went on TV saying that people were not paid off subject to signing confidentiality agreements when his own wife had enjoyed just such a departure package.) The current Leader’s husband works for Sandwell and she has declared that he does a few side-hustles too. There are a number of ways to profit from local government.
Some Sandwell employees in recent years have been directly involved in trading Class A drugs. West Midlands Police (WMP) knew of some, but provided the dealers with protection. It took outsiders - the National Crime Agency - to nail two & they are both now serving a 12-stretch.
Yes, Sandwell has a deeply corrupt relationship with WMP. Councillors and officers enjoy considerable immunity from prosecution. One errant employee did not face investigation but at the time was shagging a senior WMP officer. A fraud investigation was allowed to lapse by the police when an employee was buying council land on the cheap. He was also the son of a leading Councillor. Unusually, he was forced out of the Council but then awarded a substantial part of a £2m SEND transport contract in highly controversial circumstances. A senior WMP officer boasted of his “golf and spa weekends” with Sandwell's top brass [sic].
A policewoman mysteriously sat in on an interview between an employee and a complainant. The pair made a malicious and false allegation that the complainant had threatened them and the Council took him to Court. Fortunately the chap had recorded the whole meeting and he was exonerated (after facing an incredibly stressful few months). The police officer cried-off one of the court hearings as she claimed to be sick. On the court date she put pictures of herself shopping in New York on her socials. She faced no sanction for any of this.
On behalf of the Council, WMP ran a relentless campaign against The Sandwell Skidder for exposing corruption within the Council - until one senior officer finally “saw the light”.
Sandwell became synonymous with corruption, cronyism and incompetence and was eventually placed in ‘special measures’ by the Government due to serious governance issues. This cost taxpayers another £2m. Almost no-one has ever faced sanction and the Council continues to operate exactly as it did before. You see - officers are safe!
The Chief Executive at Sandwell for many years was an appalling groveller called Jan Britton. He managed to keep his well-paid job despite his - at best - hopeless performance and was eventually kicked out. Unusually, due to his shocking track record, he did not receive a ‘golden goodbye’, but a mate called Joe Harris in another council immediately employed him. He then got an agency job with Tory Dorset (who were aware of his terrible record) at £900 per day.
The new Chief Executive at Sandwell is on a good screw - £195,000 to £199,499 plus gold-plated pension. He is doing such a great job at the bent Council (which recently acknowledged a £20m "black hole" in its budget) that he has been allowed to work as part of a Government team at Tower Hamlets where he is paid £1,000 a day for one day a week. There is serious money in local government thanks to the taxpayer. And if you play the game well enough you also get to enjoy various taxpayer freebies and p*ss-ups too!
There we are - be smart, Forget uni and become a local bureaucrat.
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