"The government insists local authorities are responsible for managing their budgets and excessive council tax rises can be vetoed." Doesn't it just speak effing volumes about the 'them' and 'us' concept when only 2 weeks after 'they' gave themselves an inflation-busting parliamentary salary increase, and an increase in travel and secretarial expenses too, I shouldn't wonder, 'we' the plebs get an inflation-busting tax demand? I wouldn't mind if they were worth it, but everything they get involved in goes disastrously wrong. As the most recent catastrophes, think the precipitate aborting of HS2, 'Grayling', and PIPs? https://news.sky.com/story/inflation-busting-council-tax-rises-for-households-in-england-11655455
It is true that local authorities are responsible for managing their budgets, but there are some MAJOR factors over which they have no control: The majority of funding still comes from central government via the block grant. If Westminster decide to reduce your block grant significantly then no matter how carefully you've managed in the past, you're knackered. Then again they could increase your funding and you'd look great despite throwing money away left, right and centre Council spending is significantly affected by demand. One of the reasons why places like Westminster and Wandsworth have low council taxes is because the residents are overwhelmingly very wealthy and consequently aren't in need of many of the services aimed at less well off residents Councils also get revenue from business rates. If you're in the middle of a thriving city, like Westminster and Wandsworth are, you can charge high business rates and there are plenty of businesses willing to pay them. It's a completely different picture in rural areas or former industrial areas Councils don't control their size and geography. A geographically compact council will have lower costs than an otherwise similar but large one. Different parts of the country have different demands. A council in the North or up a mountain will have higher snow clearing and gritting costs than one in Cornwall or London. IMO they're often caught between a rock and a hard place. Then again some don't do themselves any favours by paying ineffective chief executives very highly and/or expensively outsourcing large parts of council spending and the finding they're getting a fraction of the service for far more money.
The answer then is presumably to vote them out and vote in a council that maintains all the cost and expense themselves
It very much depends, it cuts both ways. The local children's charity Mrs Don is volunteer treasurer for is having its funding cut because the local councils are taking everything back in house. The charity delivers services very cost-effectively because the services are provided by unpaid volunteers (the administrators are professional and paid) so it'll cost more for the council and/or they'll deliver fewer services. Some outsourcing is cost effective, some isn't, it isn't clear-cut.
I have noticed that several English councils do not have sufficient money for mandatory services like care of children. Here's Northamptonshire trying to get some money https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-northamptonshire-41831375 another example Read more at: https://inews.co.uk/news/childrens-services-youth-club-cuts-council-austerity/ Did I hear the Tories claiming they have stopped austerity,
stopped austerity...what the hell was that ever supposed to mean...!!??....anyway it doesn't mean all of a sudden there's shed loads of cash to spunk around....the tax payer is taxed to the tonsils as it is....any more tax and it'd be indentured servitude to the government.... pay for schools.....tax pay for hospitals....tax em more....so the nurses can get even fatter pay for roads....tax em up to the tits pay for police....sod the police they don't do bugger all anyway...but we pay tax for them pay for the military....YES SIR...TAX ME PLEASE SAH!! pay for criminals....yo blood you gunna pay me more tax innit bro...like respect me blood or'm gunna blade ya pay for dole....yeah mate them fat cats should gimme their cash coz I need to pay me sky subs and get darn Bet Fred pay for the welsh.....talu i fyny bastardau Saesneg pay for the Sweaties....pàigheadh suas thu fhèin basgaidean Beurla pay for housing....like so tax the ultra mega like companies like innit pay....pay.....pay....pay......its okay its just tax why go to work when its all nicked off you by the government so they can piss it up the wall....the fcuking country taxed up to its gills because that's where the money comes from...the tax payer....the countries buggered 5 ways from Sunday but stop the bus....holy crap....we cant pay for some bloody youth project....tell you what here's a plan Northern Ireland...Catholics and Proddies...please start fighting again and all blow yourselves up....the Irish are a waste of rations.....Scots...have your independence, bugger off and pay for yourselves....if you can...yeah right....and the Welsh....os gwelwch yn dda oll oll yn gollwng marw
So what are you saying? You believe in letting England fall into ruin as has been happening to the US? How little some people care about their countries. In reality the Government doesn't have money because it is paying for Brexit - about the same amount of money per week as the Brexiters said they were going to save and give to the health service. In addition austerity is a choice - a choice which never resolves the situation. The Tories are simply using this to finish England off with unchangeable neo liberalism....and one of the things they want most is to destroy local Government - a foundation of democracy....and lets not even get started on Mr Banks. But you save your £2 tax a year and live in hell. Your choice. In reality you are setting England up for civil war.
Some years ago I queried to the council CE why the mayor needed a Daimler as his civic car. No reply. I queried again using the FoI; again no reply. My small local park used to be tended by (literally) 'one man and his dog'. He was so conscientious in his work that oftentimes he was in the park until almost sundown beavering away, with his faithful dog Fred always nearby watching him. The park was maintained to absolutely immaculate standards by his efforts, and his alone. Then one day I noticed a gang of men doing the maintenance, and the next thing was that the place suddenly became a playground for unemployed brain-dead morons and their 'Staffies': after a dog attack on one of the gang members - the animals were always off-lead - the gardeners refused to go into the park unless the council clamped down on the dogs. As usual the council did nothing, and as far as I know (because I had to stop going there too, as did many others), the morons are still swinging their 'pets' around on the end of tree branches, and although there have been some infrastructure improvements (at the council tax payers expense of course?), the park itself has become a no-go area . . . and here's the thing . . . a no-go area for the very people whose ****ing ever-increasing council taxes pay for its upkeep. Just briefly - public-spirited as I am, I also queried with my erstwhile MP the wisdom of installing at prodigious cost traffic-slowing ramps on many roads including main ones, and pointing out the adverse affect on emergency vehicles - especially the obvious one where speeding ambulances were carrying patients to hospital. Again no comment, and the installations continued. And I did a couple of other protests until I just became so demoralised I decided to stop wasting my time. 'local democracy'? Forget it! Pay your council taxes or else (and I won't go there!!) and just keep quiet. There's scum at the top of society, and there's scum at the bottom, and we in the middle are paying dearly for both of them.
I guess the question is what the proposed alternative is, and what the purpose of the civic car is supposed to be. If it's simply a matter or transporting the Mayor and assorted dignitaries from place A to place B then it might very well be that a local minicab firm would be able to do the job far more cheaply. There seems however to be an element of "civic prestige" associated with official vehicles and having the Mayor of a major city pitching up to an official engagement in a clapped out V-reg Hyundai Sonata may not set the right tone (then again maybe so, it the intent is to show that the council tax needs to rise ). Back in the 1990s, my employer at the time (a large management consultancy) would often have a quiet word with employees whose vehicles they felt gave the wrong impression. They were just as unimpressed by a Porsche, Lotus or TVR as they were with a knackered old Escort. They felt that a newish Golf, BMW 3-series or similar was about right for junior staff, BMW 5-series or Mercedes E-class for more senior staff. If it's determined that the Mayor does need a semi-prestigious vehicle then an old Daimler limousine may not be a bad choice. They were comparatively cheap to source second hand (from funeral directors who really look after them), are cheap to run and hold their value pretty well. Better that than a modern saloon which may lose thousands a year in depreciation (or cost thousands a year in lease payments). In any case, that kind of thing is a drop in the bucket when it comes to the overall budget. The biggest costs by orders of magnitude are education, social care (especially for the elderly), policing and waste management.
Well this is the stereotypical small-minded provincial town where the average inhabitants' IQ doesn't even get into double figures, and they would be more impressed by the mayor turning up in a Daimler than concentrating their tiny minds in resentment that they had bought it for him, so I should've known I was on a hiding to nothing. But the secondary points in my post was to highlight the way I was treated with such contempt but had no means of redressing it. This is why I'm so psychotic in my hatred of bureaucrats, the parasites in all human life forms.
on the contrary I care about the country having people that actually care about the country and not their political skins
The only real leader this country has had that actually cared about the UK was Thatcher all the rest have been wet blankets
do what you want with England if they well let you. You are correct about Scotland and N Ireland and who knows maybe even Wales leaving you to it. My daughter used to complain about all the tax she paid as well. It has been the programming of the masses for decades. Then she read the white paper on Independence. She became an independence supporter and supported what she knew would be an increase on the taxers she was paying and currently complaining about. Why? Because she saw it would create a better society for her children and everyone else to live in. Now she cannot believe people would complain about paying taxes for things which give to society. You are going to be getting lots of increases in you tax but they will be for more military as England goes to war with others to avoid civil war. Enjoy.
ah yes that dream of a Scottish utopia...the land of free flowing whisky and free range haggis all from the cornucopia of the Scottish government....yeah....dream on....dream on ....are you inhaling mind ogling substances by any chance?
No surprise there that she was what you liked. Three more Tory councils slipping into Bankruptcy https://www.thetimes.co.uk/article/...re-slip-into-bankruptcy-danger-zone-z8g8m9vp2 No question England headed for the bankruptcy of Detroit. Don't come crying to us after!
aye she was a good lass Maggie[/QUOTE] No, not tax payers. Many people would willing pay more tax for better services and to keep the infrastructure in tact. Just people like yourself who praise neo liberalism and have already brought the country to its knees through their nationalism.
Now that was a rant and a half and every bit spot on. We live in a Democratic Dictatorship, hence your post. I recall that tax levels are at 1960 levels, high. And let's remember which two idiots created a massive debt, Blair and Brown.
yeah...was a bit of fun...seriously though I have no issue with coughing up the loot but when we have prannocks in power that think its a real fizzer of an idea to spend gazzilions of spondoolicks on nuclear subs that don't work and aircraft carriers with no aircraft and no support vessels and pandering to criminals rather than victims then you just get to thinking what's the friggin point!! Its not just Blair and Broon its all the other numpties that think pandering to the masses is the right thing to do in order to further their careers and not have to do some actual leading! Sometimes the truth is worth telling...we haven't the money so some things are going to fall by the wayside and Government will not always be there to wipe your arses for you all the time. Sometimes you have to do things for yourselves!!
