Put that in your pipe and smoke it

As Rachel from Customer Complaints prepares to squeeze the not-very-rich until the pips squeak and even Reform-led councils like Worcestershire threaten to increase tax by ten per cent, what about all the ways the public sector wastes our money?

Over the past few months, I’ve looked at various ways our cash is squandered and it never stops. The depressing truth is Birmingham’s apparently-not-bankrupt-after-all city council is so confused about money its most recent publicly-available spreadsheets seem to duplicate many of its payments.

Maybe the council is coughing up twice for the same job and hasn’t noticed, perhaps its laughable Oracle system is still not up to the job or is it user-error?

Still, for an organisation where money’s too tight to mention, it’s instructive to trawl through its most recent contracts database where you will find almost £15 million going on next year’s European Athletics Championships, £13.3 million on temporary accommodation with Metropolitan Surveyors Ltd and £499,000 on a ‘support hub for sanctuary seekers’.

Then there’s £9,800,000 to POhWER for advocacy services, ‘empowering people to have a voice and to make a real difference to their lives.’

Things are obviously not going swimmingly otherwise why spend £6.4 million with KPMG on ‘Consultancy, Support and Capacity to aid recovery and improvement plans’ or £121,200 in three months on two business analysts from PWC?

Maybe they just can’t get the staff, given they’re spending £18,900 just to recruit a new ‘executive director, city operations’.

They’re obviously worried about the birth-rate as £150,000 is going on a project to ‘deliver a bespoke Creative English programme, tailored to focus on pre-pregnancy health and wellbeing and risk factors that impact on infant mortality’.

Meanwhile it’s £19,032.83 to Birmingham City University to research the use of hookahs, bongs and shisha pipes (‘responses are completely private’), £92,960 on cricket nets in Sparkhill and £24,800 to a PR firm for ‘conceptual creative writing and content production for Birmingham City Council’s Birmingham Growth Story campaign’.

Put that in your pipe and smoke it.

Coming soon: Birmingham’s war on motorists