Jayne Dowle: We need lollipop ladies, not blue-sky council thinking

She has been off for weeks now, but so far – touch wood – everyone has managed to get across the road without accident.

Of course, there are inconsiderate drivers who treat her absence as an opportunity to zoom past mothers and kids at 40mph, but, actually, it has made us all take more responsibility for our own road safety.

I hope our lollipop lady gets better soon, but it has set me thinking. With the threat of 25,000 English council jobs to go – 10 per cent of the workforce – will we face a future without any lollipop ladies at all?

We can't take anything for granted. When Ministers say that we will all have to make sacrifices, it's not just those facing the dole queue they're talking about. It is all of us who might suddenly find that the swimming pool doesn't open late nights any more, or the library closes on a Saturday.

I'm not drawing up a list of those who should lose their jobs. That would be crass, especially because many of those under threat are barely earning the minimum wage anyway and are already struggling to make ends meet. And I know how much towns like mine, Barnsley, rely on the public sector for employment. These cuts will go deep into the local economy.

Look at the bigger picture. For years, the Government has done little to tackle the problem of public-sector dependency. If Yorkshire is to thrive, the next Government must attack that problem, and fast. Instead of shoring up the public sector, Ministers should be encouraging entrepreneurship, and consistently persuading companies to locate to our region in order to create a sustainable, varied economy.

But back to the lollipop ladies. They typify the kind of public-sector role we have come to believe we can't live without. As our experience at school has proved, when the worst comes to the worst, we have no choice but to get on with it.

It was the same when the row kicked off over fortnightly bin

collections. I complained at least as loudly as anyone else when dustbins were "streamlined" to save both money and the environment. But a few years on, I decided to accept it, and stopped worrying. And, as far as I know, no-one has been eaten by a rat.

These are the visible jobs, the ones that we really notice when there is no one there to do them, as the Leeds bin strike proved recently.

But what about all those people, working in all those council offices up and down the land? Typing stuff. Filing stuff. Putting stuff off until tomorrow. Being paid far more than the average national salary to dream up daft ideas and initiatives that fritter away public money and would be better off left in the blue-sky thinking room that your

council tax probably paid for. You're not telling me that every single one of them works absolutely as hard as they can, all the time, and totally justifies their regular pay-cheque.

And then there is the growth of bureaucracy. What about traffic wardens, or as they are euphemistically known, "parking attendants"? I can remember when Barnsley only had one. I don't recall the town centre grounding to a halt because there weren't enough of them to catch you as you nipped into the bank with no change for the meter, or pulled up with hazards flashing to pick up your mother.

Then someone in their wisdom decided that we needed more. I'm sure there was some kind of cost benefit calculated into it somewhere. But the net result is collective paranoia about getting a ticket.

It does nothing to encourage shoppers to come into the town centre. And it does everything to make local people angry, frustrated and head straight down the M1 to Meadowhall to spend their money where they can park for free.

Civil servants have been on strike this week, but ask anybody who runs their own business, or works in an ultra-competitive industry, and they will all say the same. What have they really got to complain about?

So many public-sector employees have had it easy for so long. Flexi-time, several weeks' paid holiday a year – not to mention Bank Holidays, sabbaticals, going home early on Fridays and all the rest.

It doesn't take Sir Alan Sugar to work out that there has to be some room for manoeuvre.

Alas, I fear that when the manoeuvring starts, it won't be the boys in the blue-sky thinking room who find themselves collecting their P45s. It will be those on the frontline, like our lollipop ladies.