newsjunction.co.uk

My only ever visit to the LibDemVoice blog to read their pathetic attack on Boris and look what I find: an advert for council candidates!

“Having difficulty recruiting the best candidates for your council elections?” it reads, rather like an advert for a stairlift.

It links to a page listing a range of recruitment rallies.

Apparently it’s part of some taxpayer funded (lucky us!) initiative called “Be a Councillor” from is a Department of Communities and Local Government (DCLG) launched in January 2009 and delivered by the Leadership Centre for Local Government for each of the three main political parties - although only the Lib Dems seem desperate enough to advertise - to “assist with the recruitment of a broader, deeper, and even more able pool of talented council candidates for future council elections. It is more about talent than about diversity but one leads to the other!”

But aren’t local council candidates meant to be…errr…local?

In the spirit of nothing much news worthy happening on weekends I have decided to start a new Sunday’s feature - Numpty of the Week.

Numpty is one of fastest growing in popularity words in Britain, a handy and harmless expression for idiot. It’s apparently Scotland’s favourite word, and given it’s rapid spread - I only first heard it 5/6 years ago and now it’s everywhere - it may soon be Britain’s.

Given it’s Scottish roots - although one website claims it originates in Reading around 1996 and I first heard it off a man from Portland - it is perhaps fitting that NewsJunction’s very first NOTW is Steven Purcell, Leader of Glasgow Council.

At a time of strain on government finances, rising unemployment, wage cuts, part-time working and people struggling to pay their council tax bills, Mr Purcell has lumped extra burden on the taxpayers of Glasgow - in a £7 minimum wage plan.

Workers at Scotland’s biggest local authority will be paid a new minimum wage of £7 an hour. Glasgow City Council has an annual budget of £2.4 billion and employs some 36,000 staff. He issued a challenge to other employers to do the same. Glasgow City Council contractors would be strongly encouraged to implement the rate.

Now whilst I obviously support people earning a good salary, councils have the duty to get the best deals available for taxpayers - which include a great many low income individuals om both real and state sectors, and indeed those such as pensioners with no income - and such expensive grandstanding as this is a wholly ineffective means of improving living standards. It is also inflationary, and a drain on resources better spent on schools, urban regeneration etc.

So congratulations Steven Purcell, Numpty of the Week.