Save the planet or . . .

Germanshepherdsmum

We have received two of these glossy magazines just this week - one from the county council and the other from the district. They contained very little useful information. I can’t imagine what they must cost to produce and distribute (via the postman - I doubt the PO provide the service for free). The useful information - phone numbers for different services - could have been put on a black and white A4 sheet.

Or simply send information by email? When we moved here and went online to sort out our Council Tax our local authority encourage us to sign up to updates from their website so that they can keep us up to date on information. This is really useful, for example for bin days on bank holiday weeks, information on events that the council are holding, or financial support that they are offering.
Many of us now are on local WhatsApp groups and if just one person is on the council's email update list they can post the information on WhatsApp.
I agree that it is ludicrously expensive to send out these costly printed magazines.

Snap GSM.

PS. This is getting to be a habit - I'm a little worried

Unfortunately a lot of elderly people who might find some of the service information and phone numbers helpful don’t have the internet.

Georgesgran

Maybe an Urban Myth, but a friend was telling me that a local council bought a fleet of electric vans to trial, but hadn’t realised the workmen
would need home charging points - an extra outlay.
I understand Durham Constabulary bought an electric BMW - it couldn’t manage enough charge to get it from one end of the County to the other, if it was fully loaded with equipment.

I read that when they test how many miles electric vehicles will do on a single charge they test them on a flat circular track in optimum conditions and with no passengers. I can’t imagine going in a long journey and not knowing how far I can go without having to stop and find a charging point.

Urmstongran

Wales?
Labour run?

Sheesh.

Unlikely. Electric vehicles aren’t popular in Wales - it’s the mountains you know.

Marjgran

What weird comments! The improvement in air quality (bad air kills) plus less carbon - good for your council! And they dare to keep plugging the arts? Guess some think only hair shirts will do. Goodness, try running something as complex as a council or an NHS trust…

Do you have experience in management of any gov. dept. Marjgran?
Perhaps you could inform this thread?

Let’s hope Marjgran doesn’t require one of the services her council no longer provides - perhaps because it’s blown the budget on evs.

Wake up people.
www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2024/jan/29/how-a-decade-of-austerity-has-squeezed-council-budgets-in-england

My 'flash-harry' BIL thought he was the bees knees getting an electric car but when he realised that he couldn't get from South Yorkshire to Cornwall without 4 charges he was rather embarrassed. We estimated the journey would take around 16 hours!

The vehicle is on Mobility so seemingly he is stuck with it now and rarely attends family events although we are all only around 20 miles away.

Mollygo

Sitting next to a lady in the doctors yesterday we were discussing the imminent price rise in rates. She asked me why, if we are so short of money, our council just bought a whole new fleet of electric vans.
I know the answer, and so did she but I thought it was a fair question?

If your local council needed new vans, then they were right to buy electric ones, and indeed it may even make sense financially speaking even if the vans they had could still be used.

From the eviromental viewpoint it is obviously a step in the right direction.

We all know this. What would the person you were speaking to have prefered the council to do with their money?

I have a friend in the fire service who tells me they can put out a fire in an ev only for it to reignite a few hours later.

The latest is the NHS is being EV ambulances.

Buying not being

I for one am really pleased that efforts are being made to reduce emissions in public vehicles. We now have electric buses and I love them. Quiet and non fumey. There are also new electric council vehicles but there is some grain of truth in the concerns about supply of electricity. The electricity company can't supply the level of electricity needed to charge all the vehicles overnight at the new depot. They need to up their game. In terms of financing, grants were available to the bus companies and I expect to the council too.

Germanshepherdsmum

Unfortunately a lot of elderly people who might find some of the service information and phone numbers helpful don’t have the internet.

I have to confess to knowing very few people who don't use the internet, even the very elderly here. And many who don't use the internet do have mobile phones and are on our local WhatsApp groups through their phone. Our local authority use WhatsApp for communications for some groups now.
It would be interesting to know what proportion of these expensive magazines are thrown away unread, though there is obviously no way of checking.

I live in an area which is very popular with retirees. The younger ones, like us (70s) of course have the internet and mobile phones. Those much older (90s) can be a very different kettle of fish.

I can see that an EV is great if you just use it locally - though personally I use public transport for these journeys. Maybe this means they are right for local authority use, but I can see the point that Georgesgran raised earlier about all of them needing to be charged overnight, possibly at home. Recharging in a depot would need a lot of power.
I've learned from friends and relatives that an EV's batteries don't have a very long life, which is why most of them lease rather than buy now.

grandtanteJE65

What would the person you were speaking to have prefered the council to do with their money?
As I put in the OP we know the answer.
She (as a food bank user,) and I, both know that we need to reduce the use of fossil fuels, but it’s the council’s ability to have money whilst crying poverty that we were both discussing.

Are you saying that the vans they replaced with electric vehicles didn’t need to be replaced at all Mollygo? Do you know if the council actually purchased new vehicles, or got them on 3 or 5 year leases, most of them are?

www.local.gov.uk/case-studies/replacement-council-fleet-vehicles-zero-emission-versions#:~:text=Introduction,of%20them%20are%20lease%20vehicles.

On the basis of the information available this feels like half a story to me, but maybe the answers are available.

Council's are struggling financially due to Central government not funding them sufficiently. It makes me cross to have one opinion that Council's waste money when they have to jump through so many hoops. Then electric vehicles getting a bad press when, like it or not, it's the future - and I have grandchildren so not for our generation but let's give them a sporting chance?

If they don’t go green money ( even more money 😉) will be withheld from central government.

In some cases local authorities are hopeless at managing money. This becomes all the more apparent when there is less of it. I don’t agree with acquiring evs when there are more pressing calls on the budget. Sporting chance? You must be joking - they’re gambling with taxpayers’ money.

Casdon I don’t know. Sitting in the doc’s, we weren’t doing an in depth research. Simply that we had both noticed that all the council vans we see are new and electric.

The move to electric vehicles is being heavily promoted at government level, there is an office specifically dealing with the transition to electric vehicles, and they are supporting councils to transition, build ev ports etc.

It seems that most councils lease their vehicle fleets, so they are doing what is expected of them as leases come to an end?

www.gov.uk/government/organisations/office-for-zero-emission-vehicles

Councils routinely waste or mismanage money.I’ve got a friend in Tower Hamlets who tells me about the mayor who has grandiose plans and is taking over £20 million out of council reserves for pet projects as well as spending eye watering amounts on his own staff and office.He was formally accused of fraudulent use of money amongst other things such as buying votes to get into his position but then voters reinstated him.
Google Tower Hamlets mayor, an eye opener.