Today Brighton and Hove Council unveiled its "campaign" to recruit four strategic directors (£125k each) to take forward the new "vision" for the city. Only it didn't quite trust itself and its own quite talented communications staff with this. Nope....they shelled out on "executive search consultants" Odgers Berndtson to do the job.
Interestingly they found inspiration from a band of ageing rockers, an interesting motif to choose for the city. You can see the whole thing here ...if you like!
Yes, of course, I get it. The reference is to "status quo" in the general sense - we don't want fans of the status quo here! Subtle eh?
What is interesting is that, just days after the CEO launched a campaign to "ban the babble" - a plea for an end to jargon-ridden language that no ordinary person can, or would want to understand - the company they charged with communicating the vision decided to reintroduce it. Francis and Rick have given you a flavour above, but if you look at the job descriptions, there's plenty more where that came from.
So, moving forward (as Odgers would no doubt put it), we know that massive cuts are are being threatened, that these directors' wages alone will come to half a million, and we don't yet know how much Odgers have charged. Lets hope that when councillors start threatening day centres, meals on wheels, grants to the voluntary sector, people won't judge them too harshly in the light of all the expensive nonsense they've come out with today....or maybe we hope they will....
STOP PRESS! Apparently we cannot know how much the Council paid Odgers - it's "commercially sensitive" apparently. So it looks like transperancy has gone the way of the commitment to plain English. Such alot of talk not being walked in one day!
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