PDC booklet

We are all due to receive through the post a new 16 page trumpet-blowing publication About Purbeck from PDC.
It's costing £24,000 a year for three issues.
That's £8,000 an edition. To tell us...well not really very much.
Remember when you receive it...and before you heave it into the (recycling) bin that it's cost you 40 pence to get it (whether or not you want it).
For that it appears you get some pretty pictures. A claim that the beach recharge at Swanage was completed right on schedule (not what I heard). The thoughts of Councillor Trite. The names of councillors, though not of course for the vacant seat at South Swanage, but no numbers or e-mail addresses (the advice is look on the website....but if you have access to the internet you'd already be able to know all this info and much more).
Trite says the aim is of what he calls a magazine...something of an overstatement when it's nothing more than a glossy newsletter .... "is to keep you, the resident, fully informed of what's happening in the District, keep you updated
on the latest developments to our services and tackle relevant local issues in a bit more detail".
So we get a page on fairtrade, that's really relevant don't you think, and even more on recycling, and something about fixed penalties for littering (when the sensible view is that's going to be another new labour initiative which fails to deliver, but costs you all dearly).
Oh and there's something about the preposterously costly heritage centre in the square, but we know all that already, and there's advertising about the sports centre.
Keeping residents informed about the sports centre is obviously an important part of local democracy for such a committed effective consumer-focused organisation as PDC (uhh?). That's what it claims.
And yes. I have a suggestion about improving it.
Scrap it.
Save the money.
Allow me to keep that £1.20 in my pocket.
And explain to me why in 10 years my council tax has gone up nearly three times and I seem to be getting less for it than I was then.

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Posted by Anonymous to swanage view at 6/05/2006 09:20:49 PM