23rd December 2010, 03:05 PM
Odinn - good point about the funding situation. That is the main reason the management at my local county unit has bent over backwards to stay part of the Council. However, the situation is just not fair in my eyes. Why should they be effectively bailed-out by public money? That just is not a level playing field and an unfair advantage. There are masses of private sector companies, large, medium and small, who have to chase invoices from clients. Why should archaeological companies be any different?
'All the rest is just swings and roundabouts' - to me this comment covers a multitude of sins regarding the points we've already discussed - conflicts of interest, semi-monopolistic behaviour etc
GnomeKing - my local county unit make the most of their community engagement role to their Council masters, which reinforces the justification (in their eyes) that they should remain a Council service. Community archaeology is commendable and worthy, but the local community-driven element of the local projects actually comes from the curatorial section through an outreach officer, and not from the field unit themselves. As far as the field unit is concerned, the ratio of community projects to commercial archaeological projects is tiny, and I don't think that they can honestly hold themselves up as being a publice service through reinforcing this point to their parent organisation. They are a commercial operation and use their community involvement as no more than a self-justifying tool for remaining within the protectionist auspices of local govenment, with their main motive being the reliance on public funds as a cushion whilst invoices are chased (see first para above).
Now having a local field unit that has dedicated archaeologists to lead community projects is fine with me. This is the situation at a local unitary authority near me (who thankfully don't take the lead of their immediate neighbours). They derive their funds from external funding sources such as the HLF and do not have a local commercial archaeological service as it's a conflict of interest. This should be the model for every Council.
Taking your point about redundancy - yes, much of the redundancy process is an inconvenience. However, given Union involvement etc as well as EU law the sutuation is what it is. It's not what I would wish on any company.
Where is the 'evidence' that county units produce a better product? This is your subjective opinion, as my words are. I agreed this point with Odinn earlier - outputs are mixed both in private sector and public sector organisations - but imo county units, from my experience, are not the benchmark of excellence. In my present role, I've read hundreds of grey literature reports and the ones from county units dont stand out any more than the others.
I have nothing against Councils, GnomeKing, apart from the general waste and inefficiency of the organisations (something that thankfully is being addressed with the recent spending review), but I think that commercial archaeology has no place being part of a public service and being funded and/or subsidised by public money. Councils to me are people who should provide proper front line services like community care, emergency services, waste collections (come to think of it, they could be hived off too) etc. The contribution of County unit commercial archaeological services to local education is minimal. Tokenism, in fact, to reinforce their main agenda, which is financial support to survive.
No, I would not benefit personally from the 'loss' of my local County unit. Financially that is. It might make my job better though. I wouldn't have to deal with the laissez-faire attitude of some of the staff I have to do business with, in addition to tedious comments about how much I earn, when the local staff are sitting on their armour-plated pensions and unbelievable annual leave entitlements.
As for your first point, what do I have to defend exactly? My position should be clear from this and my previous posts.
'All the rest is just swings and roundabouts' - to me this comment covers a multitude of sins regarding the points we've already discussed - conflicts of interest, semi-monopolistic behaviour etc
GnomeKing - my local county unit make the most of their community engagement role to their Council masters, which reinforces the justification (in their eyes) that they should remain a Council service. Community archaeology is commendable and worthy, but the local community-driven element of the local projects actually comes from the curatorial section through an outreach officer, and not from the field unit themselves. As far as the field unit is concerned, the ratio of community projects to commercial archaeological projects is tiny, and I don't think that they can honestly hold themselves up as being a publice service through reinforcing this point to their parent organisation. They are a commercial operation and use their community involvement as no more than a self-justifying tool for remaining within the protectionist auspices of local govenment, with their main motive being the reliance on public funds as a cushion whilst invoices are chased (see first para above).
Now having a local field unit that has dedicated archaeologists to lead community projects is fine with me. This is the situation at a local unitary authority near me (who thankfully don't take the lead of their immediate neighbours). They derive their funds from external funding sources such as the HLF and do not have a local commercial archaeological service as it's a conflict of interest. This should be the model for every Council.
Taking your point about redundancy - yes, much of the redundancy process is an inconvenience. However, given Union involvement etc as well as EU law the sutuation is what it is. It's not what I would wish on any company.
Where is the 'evidence' that county units produce a better product? This is your subjective opinion, as my words are. I agreed this point with Odinn earlier - outputs are mixed both in private sector and public sector organisations - but imo county units, from my experience, are not the benchmark of excellence. In my present role, I've read hundreds of grey literature reports and the ones from county units dont stand out any more than the others.
I have nothing against Councils, GnomeKing, apart from the general waste and inefficiency of the organisations (something that thankfully is being addressed with the recent spending review), but I think that commercial archaeology has no place being part of a public service and being funded and/or subsidised by public money. Councils to me are people who should provide proper front line services like community care, emergency services, waste collections (come to think of it, they could be hived off too) etc. The contribution of County unit commercial archaeological services to local education is minimal. Tokenism, in fact, to reinforce their main agenda, which is financial support to survive.
No, I would not benefit personally from the 'loss' of my local County unit. Financially that is. It might make my job better though. I wouldn't have to deal with the laissez-faire attitude of some of the staff I have to do business with, in addition to tedious comments about how much I earn, when the local staff are sitting on their armour-plated pensions and unbelievable annual leave entitlements.
As for your first point, what do I have to defend exactly? My position should be clear from this and my previous posts.