According to the frustrated swimmers, executives of Hackney Council have taken emergency action to close service centres this afternoon, with immediate effect, in the face of a £10 million overspend. You couldn't make this rubbish up and I note that even the swimmers don't seem too certain, questioning the credibility of their information source Geoff, overheard in the Pub on the Park. Three reasons why I can confidently declare this to be a pack of lies are as follows: |
1. | The Pub on the Park has been transformed recently from a comfortable middle-class hostelry to a noisy home for the Borough's drunks. So you are not likely to find anyone in there from the Town Hall. And if you did, you wouldn't be able to hear them whistle-blowing. |
2. | Hackney Council would never take action like this on a Friday, as this would leave The Hackney Groveller five whole days to discover the news and find someone to write up the story by the deadline on Wednesday. We always do our best to ensure that The Groveller never covers a good story, not that we have to try too hard! |
3. | £10 million? Don't make me larf. I'm sure we managed to overspend much more than that. |
4 comments:
Only £10m? children and disabled peoples services facing cuts?
I blame the Lib Dems.
Every penny of that £10k spent on promoting Hackney's crap services stall at Brighton was worth it.
Jules got his photo taken with Gordon.
"Jules got his photo taken with Gordon."
Really? How come we haven't had THAT picture rammed down our throats yet?
Only ten million so far? Rumour has it there's a much bigger hole than that in the finances.
Ultimately the reserves can cover a mere ten million pound overspend (some 4% of the budget excluding "Building Schools for the Future" and the other education stuff they can't play with), but any more and they're in deeper in dog shit than London Fields
The budget overspend is 0.45% - £1.2m - and more than covered by £3m in as yet unspent contingencies - and may be reduced to nil by year end - according to the Overall Financial Position report we were scrutinising at Governances & Resources Cttee last night. It sounds like your source in the pub was talking nonsense.
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