Councillors? This panic alarm may be free in your minds but it is actually paid for by hard-pressed taxpayers facing roaring inflation and income decimation.
Any politician with a modicum of commonsense would have asked him/herself...."who can I get to pay for this as a PR exercise?"
The answer would have been a bank or perhaps a Waitrose. Instead, the Council decides to splash our cash.
It makes one despair!
Dear Dame,
ReplyDeleteThis is very gimmicky. Profligate Labour Councils issued panic alarms years ago. They started issuing them to officers who visited people in their homes for safety reasons and then dished them out wholesale to any freeloader. When its free, people go for them.
The Council needs to getting the police to bear the streets not squander our tax on gimmicks
ReplyDeleteToo many Councillors, too much money to spend, not enough to do
ReplyDeleteAnother failure of Leadership from dizzy Campbell. Oblivious to the economic fundamentals of Society and devoid of any understanding of Conservative philosophy.
DeleteTaxation as a percentage of GDP is already way beyond the prudent Conservative benchmark due to the cost of the pandemic. Funding (from taxation) for essential services like transport, schools and health is in crisis. Social housing in RBKC is crumbling. Cutbacks in the TMO surveyors department contributed to the Grenfell catastrophy.
What is the response of dizzy and her Cabinet of Faulks and Weale?
* free panic alarms
* sitting out benches in High Street Kensington (£2500 each) cluttering up the pavements
* £1 million sitting out area for Opera Holland Park
* endless pavement renewal in the rich parts of the Borough
Clear the Swamp is a trouble maker. And is peddling lies. All of the expenditure above costs nothing. The expensive new pavements are paid for by parking charges and penalties ie new pavements are free for tax payers. The sitting out benches are paid for by Government grants ie free for tax payers. Holland Park expenditure is for the maintenance of a Heritage Area - statutory obligation. Panic alarms are so inexpensive that the cost is undetectable
DeleteMore bird brain economics from Campbell and Faulks. Remember, according to Campbell, the £100m Holland Park School "cost nothing". Try and run a household budget with that power of analysis!
DeleteThe new school of "Campbell Economics"
DeleteThroughout history there is a long list of spend thrift women who have wrecked their husband's fortunes.
DeleteIt is quite extraordinary that Conservative voters are prepared to tolerate a Nanny State in the Royal Borough
ReplyDeleteThe cost of a panic alarm is £18. The transaction cost is £15 (buying department, transport, storage, distribution, handling, returns). Cost to taxpayer £33 each
Delete150,000 RBKC residents. Cost exposure for panic alarms is £5 million.
Nuts. Mrs Thatcher must be turning in her grave.
£5 million budget for panic alarms? Are they crazy???
DeleteWhy on earth are heard pressed Council Tax payers being forced to pay for the free distribution of panic alarms. Who dreams up these ideas?
ReplyDeleteCould we have free condoms please? STDs on the increase
ReplyDeleteOooooh........
Delete"Free panic alarms to make people feel safer"
ReplyDeleteHow about free booze to make us feel merrier?
Free Panic Alarms is very much the way of the People's Republic of Lewisham from whence the Good Quirk came.
DeleteThis is the kind of nonsense that Justice4Grenfell need to take note of
ReplyDeleteWhere does one stop? The Council Tax bucket is an endless piggy bank. Flying saucers in Ladbroke Grove, Middle Eastern "happenings" in Holland Gallery. Why not? All you need is the "idea" and hey presto, there is a Committee somewhere to sign off the funds
ReplyDeleteI think we are talking something like this https://www.printed4you.co.uk/panic-alarm#fo_c=3486&fo_k=b031bb392114df1aa3b642b396cb7e0a&fo_s=gsuruk unit price about £1.75
ReplyDeleteYou would be surprised how cost racks up when bureaucracies like local Government get involved in business and trade instead of leaving this to the private sector and competition. Where it should be.
DeleteDo you remember the great experiment when Hornton Street decided to get involved in private care provision? A disaster. They could not compete on price.
The private care idea required a huge number of man hours from Officers to develop the plan (job creation) and the business plan was discussed, reviewed and approved by the Cabinet. Cabinet Councillors of goodwill but not the first clue about business - it is not their job. Virgins discussing copulation.
DeleteGovernment needs to stay out of the risk business.
Some time ago there was a RBKC home security campaign. We were told we were to get a free door viewer in our front door, and a free mains security light to automatically illuminate the front door when someone approached. They were duly fitted; lots of drilling, wiring, climbing up ladders etc. Totally pointless - the front door is to a converted Victorian house of 6 flats with an entry phone so no one ever goes down to the front door to see who is there. And the stuff was junk they couldn't sell - the door viewer had a crack in the lens, and the light was so dim it was useless - I replaced it with a floodlight.
ReplyDeleteWas this first class work done by the TMO?
Deletevery likely
DeleteNo - actually it was Notting Hill Housing Association with a grant from ?, I thought from RBKC but it might have been central government.
DeleteThe TMO was just as bad as Notting Hill Housing Association. The TMO re-wired my block of flats. The intercom entry phone worked before the re-wiring. After the re-wiring, it never worked again. They had a bloke tinker with the device for a day (and paid for a day of work) then decided that it was broken a new one was required; courtesy of tenants and leaseholders and not the contractor who broke it.
DeleteHow about the council giving out stab proof vests?
ReplyDeleteCllr Campbell needs to get it into her head, and communicate clearly to Barry Quirk, that the residents of RBKC did not elect a socialist Government, where the philosophy is that the State pays for everything and levies high taxes.
ReplyDeleteCampbell needs to figure out that she is supposed to be running a Conservative administration