Bureaucrats, darned bureaucrats: Ken Gibbs

THE BEAST SPEAKS FOR OTHERS
IN THE SAME BOAT

Rarely have I been happy to have survived a career with UNICEF, but this week, I felt that I had been taught so much to enable me to survive the attentions of our local County Council which thinks it is a bureaucracy well beyond UNICEF.  They have Council Offices which would make the UN jealous and a Council Meeting Chamber which I would be interested to see in the flesh.

To paint a brief picture of the situation:  Our esteemed County Councillors and their support staff have taken to trying to dazzle us with terminology to cover a rather lacklustre performance, conveniently forgetting that our tax revenue funds them.

Recently, the Council decided that their waste disposal system needed changing to reduce landfill and increase recycling both of these ideals being aimed at improving our promise to achieve net zero carbon by a certain date.  So far, so good.

THE NEW ‘CONTAINMENT EQUIPMENT’

We were told that the new ‘system’ would require improved ‘containment equipment’ – which in the vernacular translates to ‘bins’ – which would be delivered to our property by 11th October, but in the remote possibility that this deadline wasn’t met, to alert the Council.

They weren’t delivered by 11th October, so we alerted the ‘Waste Management Team’ of the Council.  Immediately, we received a message that we shouldn’t inform the Council but that we should inform their contractors (interestingly named ‘Biffa’). Happily, a delivery of the ‘containment equipment’ was made to our area two days later and guess what?  The only ones NOT receiving the new ‘containment equipment’ were those who had alerted the Council that they had been missed earlier.

I talked to the driver of the delivery vehicle, indicating that they were delivering to properties that did not even qualify for the new equipment, and were withholding the new bins from those that did.  Did they have a Smart Phone ?  Yes, they did.  “Oh, good”, I said, “then you can phone the Council and tell them that the list they have given you is completely wrong”.  The ‘operatives’ (aka staff doing the work) felt this was an inappropriate suggestion, so I suggested that they could phone their own office with the same information.  The ‘operatives’ said they would only deliver to the list they had – which they showed me on their Smart Phone.  Indeed, our name was not selected.

I then pointed out that our Council taxes actually funded their operation and that they would be having to return to make the correct delivery which I certainly was not going to be paying additional taxes for, if you see what I mean.  ‘Operatives’ became a little surly, so I reasoned that I would phone the Biffa Head Office and remonstrate with them directly.

Biffa Head Office said that I shouldn’t be alerting them (despite the fact that their staff were doing the work) and that I should phone the Council again and insist.  So here we are sitting in the middle of a spat between Council and its contractor, doing the work of managing the project for them.  I think I was courteous though I had rage in my heart – just like when the UNICEF Admin refused to honour a payment for a very expensive airline ticket which they had instructed me to purchase (“. . . .and you will be reimbursed on arrival” – which never happened).  Sounds familiar ?

Move on to two days later – having had four messages from different players all of which were contradictory – and I had written to the Council Web Manager to see if rattling that cage would have any effect.  It did.  I had a very courteous message back saying that she had contacted the Waste Management Team – probably because I had suggested that I might be forced into a Peasants’ Revolt where a group of us would attend a full Council Meeting with the local press in attendance to ask for an explanation, on camera.

Now why didn’t we do that in UNICEF ?  Worked a treat.  Next day we had a delivery by Biffa staff who couldn’t have been more helpful.  If only I had been a fly on the wall when the Waste Management Team and Biffa went at each other, hammer and tongs.  The only pity was that we didn’t have to mount a full Peasants’ Revolt on camera, as I love a good scrap.

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