Dod101 wrote:If BJ treats council employees as in his response to me then I am not surprised he gets a poor service.
If Dod could have been @rsed to read this thread properly, then he'd have noticed that "arrogant" posters such as myself were citing incidents where they had been wrongly subjected to legal threats and injustices. And where many of the avenues of recourse that he takes for granted had been deliberately closed off by the high and mighty. If he is surprised that people don't like that, then I am lost for words.
I live in a part of the country where civil servants are mostly civil and if not I would have no hesitation in referring the matter to my councillor....I have invariably found if I remember that civil servants are human just like the rest of us and treat them accordingly they will repay me in kind.
Bully for you, because I don't. My county council is the kind of place where the top bods vote themselves a 38% expenses increase and a 15% annual pay rise while axing essential services. (Which they did a few years back.) Where the school buses have been stopped in order to pay for a staff car park at County Hall. Where I've been officially told that I face prosecution if I put a plastic food container into my plastic recycling bin. (It takes bottles only - everything else goes to landfill.) Where I am doing the wrong thing by filling my green waste bin to 75% capacity. (It's being greedy apparently, and I obviously have too many trees in my garden, and I ought to rip some of them out. Although, in fairness, the chief of environmental services who said that to me did eventually get the sack for other misdemeanours.)
And so on, and so on, and so on. It sounds like you have more luck than me with your council, Dod, but do try to understand that others in other locations are less fortunate, and it grinds you down in the end. My local civil service has a lot of nice people too, but the decision-makers at the top have often made it plain that they don't intend to bother themselves with dealing with the public's concerns. and where the avenues for recourse have been actively closed off. But there I go, repeating myself. And I have a life to get on with.
BJ