I am quite surprised - my dear ol' mum is just over the Pennines from you in Kirklees, and no.1 son works in Macclesfield which is just to the South. They both seem to get far superior services from the respective councils. The North/South divide isn't always what everyone thinks it is...
Are these councils public entities? My town contracts the garbage service out to a private company and it's drastically cheaper here. I mean, I just checked and £250 a month would pay for a 4-cubic-yard dumpster being picked up twice a week. The initial delivery rate for a freaking dumpster is $5. I'm sure they get their money some other way though.
To be fair, the £250 isn't just for garbage - it covers... whatever else councils do. Schools (although we paid for my son's education privately and my parents paid for mine), roads (although not my road which is private), street-lighting (again, not my road), police force (I do use that - I call them about the guy breaking all the lock-down laws, stealing fish from a lake, fishing out of season etc. etc. etc. and they say they can't do anything about it), AND... libraries! I do use those.
Oh, that makes more sense. I'm not clear on the definition of a council. Is it a subsidiary body of the town or something else?
Kind of, yes. As Hammer says they provide and manage a range of ‘necessary’ services. Alongside those things already mentioned, local councils are also responsible for maintaining municipal parks, cleaning the streets, removing flytips... and not emptying residential bins.
Goodness, now you're asking... I think @big soft moose gets this more than I do, but basically we have... Parish councils - very localised, in theory councillors are elected, but they can be co-opted by the council (and usually are). Parish councils have pretty much zero funding, and deal with very local things like keeping footpaths clear, playgrounds, making recommendations around planning permission for new houses, extensions etc. Town councils - members are elected, have a budget from the county council, deal with larger issues like public spaces and parks etc. street lighting on minor roads, minor road repairs City councils - same as towns really, but for cities. Probably better funded. Borough Councils - councillors are elected, responsible for raising the council tax which pays for all this, rubbish collection, running recycling centres, providing facilities for elderly or less able people, care homes(?). Have a healthy budget from the council taxes. County councils - not sure how you get to be a county councillor, but they seem to oversee the Borough and town councils, organise the funding from council taxes and grants from central government taxation. They manage larger (trunk) roads etc., schools, police forces. Government - members of parliament are elected every few years when we have a "general" election (or in ad hoc by-elections), responsible for big stuff like motorways, power-stations, armed forces, global pandemics etc. Raise money through a massive variety of taxes. Supported by a huge, unelected, civil service who do the actual work and get knighted. Not a surprise that we are heavily taxed country, really (c:
you missed district councils ... which administer certain functions within their district separate to county councils who administer other functions on a county wide basis .... in some areas we also have unitary council which are a combination of district and county. its also necessary to understand that district and county (also city, borough, unitary etc) have both elected members who make policy and set budget, and paid staff (Officers) who deliver services but who are politically neutral..
In other news . . . I got a message on Instagram yesterday from a student who's turning 18 on Thursday. Her particular school is shut down again due to the COVID, but she'd really, really been hoping I could sing her Happy Birthday that day (I do that when I'm in subbing on a kid's birthday). So would I, could I send her a video of me doing that? I agreed, but I can't quite figure out how to go about it. I want it to be private, just to her Instagram address, but every time I google the subject, it only talks about disappearing videos. Like, the recipient can watch them once and they go away. What's the point of that? Anybody here know how to send a regular video, but private?
Set your cell phone to start a video recording. Sing happy birthday. Upload the file to your computer and e-mail it -- or send it to her directly out of your cell phone, either as an e-mail attachment or embedded in a text message.
Technically possible, but I don't have her email address. And I'm not sure I want a random student to have mine.
Thank fuck I used my "professional" gmail address when the school had us all set up Blackboard accounts. They didn't tell us that it would become accessible to every student in every class we taught.
Those are for sending sexy time videos to your insignificant other For more usual video uses i'd be inclined to just video the happy birthday on your phone and put it on youtube, or tiktok or what have you and send her the link in a dm ... or send her a zoom meeting request and sing it live
As for me, I figured it out. Recorded the video on my phone, then found the message thread on Instagram. Replied to it, attaching the file using the photo icon. My phone had to balk, of course, till I did a massive clearance of the cache. After several attempts the video got through. Happy kid, relieved me.
I wouldn’t say I’m regretting it yet, but I’m certainly beginning to doubt my recent move. Living in the bowels of a town centre is not for those who need peace and quiet for sleeping. There’s vans and lorries coming and going, doors opening, doors closing, bangs, bumps, shutters rattling, goods being loaded, goods being unloaded...
I know when I left Chicago, I had the opposite problem. I moved about 80 miles out into the boonies of northern Illinois and I couldn’t sleep at night because the crickets were too loud.