On 27/01/07, Will Chapman <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: > > THere is no doubt in my mind that these jobs were a direct result > of Defra's cuts. As such, by definition BW (and therefore the > waterways at large) cannot be better off.
I am afraid you have this wrong, Will. The redundancies were not even a result of the DEFRA cuts, let alone a direct result. If there had been no DEFRA cuts there would still have been 180 redundancies. These had already been formulated BEFORE the cuts were announced and were part of a BW policy decision to cut office staff for efficiency reasons. (Bankside staff have remained consistent at about 800 for a dedade or so now) As I said in my last posting, what the DEFRA cuts did was alter the TIMING of the redundancies. This meant there could be no natural wastage, and not as many voluntary redundancies as there might otherwise have been. Steve [Non-text portions of this message have been removed]
