I see that Eastbourne Borough Council is pleading poverty again and saying that services will be cut and council tax will be higher as usual. However, I would have thought the ideal place to start cutbacks would be among the executives and administrators who are ‘earning’ somewhere in the region of £250,000 per year but don’t seem to do much to deserve that sort of money. They also seem to have extremely long holidays compared to the rest of us too.
Back in the 1990s they employed a person who I won’t name and one of his duties was to climb the stairs to the centre of the roof of the Grand Hotel to take the sunshine records from the Campbell Stokes recorder (similar to in the picture). Most of the time he just couldn’t be bothered and it was easy to see that he couldn’t with the tell-tale dash printed by the sunshine hours reading for Eastbourne in the next day’s meteorological records in the national daily newspapers. This wasn’t just a one-off – it was constant. If this was Uckfield or Crawley it wouldn’t matter so much but Eastbourne is a tourist resort whose motto for years was ‘Suntrap and showcase of the south’. So if somebody wanted to check the sunshine records for Eastbourne if they fancied a holiday there they wouldn’t have much luck.
If the likes of us were that negligent in our duties – constantly – we’d be facing the sack but despite the evidence being there in the newspapers every day that he hadn’t bothered to take the sunshine readings the council didn’t say a word.
Airbourne is another waste of money. It doesn’t profit the town in general but we pay for it and greedy town centre businesses and big hotels make a massive profits. Maybe the whole event should be paid for by the big businesses – especially Tim Martin, the person who owns Wetherspoons where they allegedly had the cheek to raise their prices during Airbourne! It’s time we were rid of the overpaid incompetents at the top. Cut the salaries down to something we might recognise as a more typical wage packet and maybe employ some qualified people to fill the positions rather than the public school idiots given the jobs as a ‘favour’ after they fail to pass any of their exams. It’s high time they experienced an appointment at the Jobcentre rather than inflict their incompetence on us.
The above is just an opinion and anyone who wants to write to me care of the newspaper regarding this content – please do so! Swear words are not accepted.
