Harringay, Haringey - So Good they Spelt it Twice!
Two £38k Haringey Council Jobs Advertised for Haringey People
**Clive Carter won't believeeeeeeeee this**
About the role
Haringey is an exciting, challenging and rapidly-changing borough, and we’re looking for an ambitious communications professional to join our busy press office.
About you
You will play a key role in helping us to enhance the reputation of the council, as well as promoting the borough as a great place to live, work and invest.
You will be involved with the production of our flagship residents’ magazine Haringey People, will develop and implement effective proactive campaigns and will write press releases and copy for internal and external publications.
Rest of advert here
(Highlights are the bits that made me spit out my drink in disbelief)
Thoughts?
Replies to This Discussion
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Permalink Reply by Clive Carter on
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I was trying not to focus simply on one advert.
Yes, that much I got and I did understand there was an attempt to shift the focus.
I am disappointed but not really surprised that not a single better way of spending £100k to £120k can be thought of, apart from spending on public relations.
Perhaps the two new staff members are to be brought in to de-politician HP. I doubt it.
I don't think I've made an instant judgement on one advert, any more than Seema has: distaste for this sickening spending reflects long and widely held views about the undue, excessive emphasis Haringey places on PR.
Where are the council's priorities and should PR really be at the top?
The above statement seems to evince an unwillingness to engage directly with a real issue of public spending that Seema has highlighted - much less to grasp it. If the above statement - of intense hand-wringing - is typical of how councillors consider spending issues, its no wonder the council budget is a mess.
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Permalink Reply by matt on
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Hackney Today is excellent; read the Nov 5th issue. It's out regularly (fortnightly), contains a good mix of news, features, council service updates, policy successes, history, culture, events.
Haringey People is poor by comparison.
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Permalink Reply by John McMullan on
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Nice spot Seema.
Alan, let's pretend that these roles are attracting the London Living wage of £8.30 an hour and see if you find them easier to defend.
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Permalink Reply by Seema Chandwani on
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The LLW per an hour x 36hrs a week dont equate to £38k. How did you figure that?
Secondly Haringey is a LLW borough, ALL of its staff are on LLW but not all of its staff are on £38k
Lastly, salary is not the point per se, this could pay for two social workers, 3 youth workers, 6-7 part time play workers, 2 housing advisors, 3 teaching assistants etc etc. This is about priorities!!
As a taxpayer i dont pay for promotional services & reputation building, i pay for people focused services. The wording of this advert illustrated no benefits to me or local people.
Its a disgrace & demonstrates priorities!
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I was giving Alan a chance to defend it, pretending that the salary was the LLW and not £38K (which is not very much if you are supporting a family without recourse to housing benefit BTW, more than half of that would go on rent).
See? Pretending?
I don't think it's right to get worked up about the salary and it detracts from the outrageous bits you highlighted from the original advertisement. They are going to use our council tax to pull the wool over our eyes!
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I don't think it's right to get worked up about the salary
'fraid I can't agree John: Seema is right when she says this [spending of c. £110,000] is about priorities.
We shouldn't have to put up with council propaganda at all, even if it could easily be afforded, which it cannot. But it certainly shouldn't come before people hurting - and I for one can think of how such a sum could be spent in better, more moral ways.
Governance is largely about making the right, rational choices.
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Permalink Reply by Alan Stanton on
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Pulling wool over our eyes, John? There's a bit of that going on. And I'm on record criticising it.
But there's a large amount of straightforward information giving. Take the last edition of Haringey People for example. What's wrong with having pieces about: Adoption; the new Waste & Recycling arrangements; Black History Month, Age Concern's Transage Action Project, etc etc?
What I wrote before suggested possible ways to remove the politicking from Haringey People. And carrying out the public information function in a more efficient way. Previously I invited other HoL members to suggest Council newspapers elsewhere which they thought did a better job. Matt complimented Hackney Today which is fortnightly. Did you take a look? What do you think? (Will Hoyle was positive about Somerset's newspaper, but I couldn't find a link on their website.)
John, do you really think I'm a praise-all blockhead who comes on this site or other websites simply to "defend" Haringey Council decisions? If my job is to "defend" anyone it's residents in my ward and across the borough. I've been posting online since 2007 and have praised good things which council staff do. But have never held back on criticism. I also suggest changes and improvements. What are your ideas for improving the way Haringey gives public information?
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For the record this was sent to me I dont search Haringey Council for jobs! Im more than happy at my current workplace & am not a sadist :))
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Permalink Reply by 1ebg8ca44azh3 on
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This is interesting as both myself and two other colleagues in the communications business put ourselves forward for these roles, and despite me and two colleagues all being experienced communications and marketing professionals NOT one of us were called for an interview for these jobs. We all varied in ages, and all were experienced in communcations, two of us for local authorities. I myself met and exceeded all their essential and non essential criteria for these roles. But was not even granted an interview.
When the passing date had closed for these roles I telephoned to ask if they had shortlisted the role, to be told no the press office management had not even passed who they wanted shortlisted for the interviews. Then a week passed, ONE WEEK and a colleague called to check on progress to be told they had shortlisted, interviewed and appointed. NO WAY could this have happened in this short time. We all believe Haringey Council knew from the very beginning who they wanted in this role, it was either internal appointments, and they had to 'appear' to look fair by asking people to apply from outside then appoint the people they wanted, or some other very dodgy criteria indeed must have applied. I say dodgy as obviously experienced, qualified local authority communications officers were not even shortlisted.
Whoever got these two positions... all I can say it was a very dubious appointment!!
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Red House – the council wouldn't be alone in this kind of practice. In the same way that the council needs to be seen to be consulting residents about some things, they need to be seen to be objective about recruitment.
And with Haringey, PR jobs are more sensitive, respected and important than other positions. It's seen as a core function. Candidates would need to be trusted to put out a pure message that is on message. Cllr. Lorna Reith once justified the (propaganda) character of HP magazine on the grounds that it counteracted negative comment from the (free) press.
On your application form, were you asked – as I understand School Governor candidates are – whether or not you were a member of a political party?
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Permalink Reply by pamish on
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The link now goes to a blank page. I'd have liked to have seen the job description and person spec., don't suppose you kept a copy? NB If they had an internal candidate (ref Red House) that should have been stated in the job ad. It's a job in the press office, not two fulltimers on HP.
£38k is a not untypical wage for a journalist on an established mag, and that's all this job is, just to a narrow brief. It likely includes a lot of mundane work beyond HP, eg writing press releases, updating the LBH website and liaising with local and national press. Maybe direct html input etc.
Lately I've been getting HP Lite weekly on an e-list. This could be the way it will develop at least for those in reach of the interweb, and these new/old jobs will be include bigging that up I bet. I suggested years ago in some forum that I would be happy to have a pdf of HP instead of a print copy, so it would save on print and delivery costs. At the time it was deferred as an interesting idea, they said keeping track of people's emails is a problem. So HP Lite could be a pilot for replacing the glossy, following the trend for all print media.
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Pam, it's been available as a downloadable PDF file for some time. I also posted a while back that people can contact Sally Lowe to get their names taken off the distribution list for the paper version. sally.lowe@haringey.gov.uk
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