James Buckley (Jay from the Inbetweeners) wants to know why Councils keep increasing Council Tax, despite services getting poorer. He has a fair question, and [spoiler] the answer is austerity.
It's also encouraged some council to engage in risky ventures that have landed them in a huge mess. Warrington Borough Council is a perfect example. The root cause may be austerity, but the cure devised by the council has turned out worse than the disease.
It's always demonise the unemployed, tell the disabled, they are shirkers, tax the working poor, attack political footballs like trans kids... then laud Gideon Osborn for getting 2% tax from Google despite the bill being 20% as if he won a watch. Tax wealth, ban legal tax avoidance - you are effectively taxing being moral, you tax things you want to go away like cigarettes, think about that - and fund HMRC so they can go after the rich and corporations, not for higher tax rates but the ones we already have, not the poxy effective tax rates they actually pay.
This is not us running out of cash, it is the rich getting greedy. Go look at CEO pay compared to the average worker decade on decade. This The Great Depression/robber barron sh-- stuff.
The Will Ferrell move The Other Guys is not a great film but I advise you all to find the end credits on YouTube feel your mind boggle as they draw the lines between the dots. (can you post YouTube links on here?)
Never have a I seen credits smarter than the film in my whole life.
The US is heading in the same direction. Funding for FEMA (Federal Emergency Management Agency) will be funded through the end of this year by the Federal government but Trump is calling for states to cover all natural disasters beginning next year.
The states, in turn, will be forced to terminate services in many areas in order to afford the billions such emergencies will cost.
Medicare has been slashed with, again, the states expected to cover the costs of the newly uninsured. Hazardous waste sites will no longer be cleaned up with Federal spending. That will also be the responsibility of each state.
The state, in turn, will likely shift much of this financial burden to counties and cities that will be ill-equipped to afford it.
The result will be the sucking sound of the country’s future swirling around an open drain.
A minor correction to an excellent article - libraries are a statutory service, a fact most senior politicians seem unaware of. This hasn’t prevented over 300 libraries closing since 2010, more than 8,000 library jobs ( mainly professional staff) being cut and many libraries being handed over to unpaid volunteers. Needless to say, the Labour government has nothing to reverse this trend and further damaging cuts to the service seem inevitable. So once again, council tax payers are paying more for a worse service. They just need to read this article to understand why.
If they hadn't sold council houses they would have regular cash and lower rents, I believe a resurgence of municipal socialism would be how we take power from the rich by pulling the rug out from the bottom. I Wales we've had a greedy corrupt Labour Party who's ideas are bankrupt in for ever I look forward to sweeping them away with a new party. Thatcher and Tories hated municipal socialism and as person shows there are ways to use council contracts to regenerate our community stop giving big contracts to multinationals, create a department to support small businesses and cooperatives? https://neweconomics.opendemocracy.net/preston-model-modern-politics-municipal-socialism/
James is telling us all in plain English how the plunderers are running the show locally.
I have been told that all the council tax payments go direct to HMRC, then distributed to the council districts, this may help their leveling up/ down policy?
If you want to know where a seriously large proportion of the British Tax Payers Money goes,
look no further than the UK Foreign, Commonwealth & Development Office.
This is their mission statement:
We are a public limited company. FCDO has an arms-length governance model for its shareholding in British International Investment. This mirrors best practice in the private sector and is tailored to the needs of a public limited company wholly owned by the UK Government.
The UK Column has created a searchable database of FCDO spending, from GOV>UK Services and Information. The companies listed and the monies involved are stagering and disturbing reading, I still cant get my head around figures. The plunderers are truly International.
The British Public should demand an official audit.
See Link to view the searchable database. Be patient as it takes a while to load. Be prepared to be shocked an overwhelmed.
'Cos they want all the MONEY for themselves and their mates
NoMoreBloodyBillionaires !
Tory and lib dem austerity :-)
It's also encouraged some council to engage in risky ventures that have landed them in a huge mess. Warrington Borough Council is a perfect example. The root cause may be austerity, but the cure devised by the council has turned out worse than the disease.
It's always demonise the unemployed, tell the disabled, they are shirkers, tax the working poor, attack political footballs like trans kids... then laud Gideon Osborn for getting 2% tax from Google despite the bill being 20% as if he won a watch. Tax wealth, ban legal tax avoidance - you are effectively taxing being moral, you tax things you want to go away like cigarettes, think about that - and fund HMRC so they can go after the rich and corporations, not for higher tax rates but the ones we already have, not the poxy effective tax rates they actually pay.
This is not us running out of cash, it is the rich getting greedy. Go look at CEO pay compared to the average worker decade on decade. This The Great Depression/robber barron sh-- stuff.
The Will Ferrell move The Other Guys is not a great film but I advise you all to find the end credits on YouTube feel your mind boggle as they draw the lines between the dots. (can you post YouTube links on here?)
Never have a I seen credits smarter than the film in my whole life.
Great work AAV, TY
Councils need to begin exploring how than can return to issuing bonds to finance their expenditure.
The US is heading in the same direction. Funding for FEMA (Federal Emergency Management Agency) will be funded through the end of this year by the Federal government but Trump is calling for states to cover all natural disasters beginning next year.
The states, in turn, will be forced to terminate services in many areas in order to afford the billions such emergencies will cost.
Medicare has been slashed with, again, the states expected to cover the costs of the newly uninsured. Hazardous waste sites will no longer be cleaned up with Federal spending. That will also be the responsibility of each state.
The state, in turn, will likely shift much of this financial burden to counties and cities that will be ill-equipped to afford it.
The result will be the sucking sound of the country’s future swirling around an open drain.
A minor correction to an excellent article - libraries are a statutory service, a fact most senior politicians seem unaware of. This hasn’t prevented over 300 libraries closing since 2010, more than 8,000 library jobs ( mainly professional staff) being cut and many libraries being handed over to unpaid volunteers. Needless to say, the Labour government has nothing to reverse this trend and further damaging cuts to the service seem inevitable. So once again, council tax payers are paying more for a worse service. They just need to read this article to understand why.
You are of course completely right Tom.
Question:
Why do swathes of the country look like they are falling apart at the seams?
Answer:
Because ‘they are.’
If they hadn't sold council houses they would have regular cash and lower rents, I believe a resurgence of municipal socialism would be how we take power from the rich by pulling the rug out from the bottom. I Wales we've had a greedy corrupt Labour Party who's ideas are bankrupt in for ever I look forward to sweeping them away with a new party. Thatcher and Tories hated municipal socialism and as person shows there are ways to use council contracts to regenerate our community stop giving big contracts to multinationals, create a department to support small businesses and cooperatives? https://neweconomics.opendemocracy.net/preston-model-modern-politics-municipal-socialism/
James is telling us all in plain English how the plunderers are running the show locally.
I have been told that all the council tax payments go direct to HMRC, then distributed to the council districts, this may help their leveling up/ down policy?
If you want to know where a seriously large proportion of the British Tax Payers Money goes,
look no further than the UK Foreign, Commonwealth & Development Office.
This is their mission statement:
We are a public limited company. FCDO has an arms-length governance model for its shareholding in British International Investment. This mirrors best practice in the private sector and is tailored to the needs of a public limited company wholly owned by the UK Government.
The UK Column has created a searchable database of FCDO spending, from GOV>UK Services and Information. The companies listed and the monies involved are stagering and disturbing reading, I still cant get my head around figures. The plunderers are truly International.
The British Public should demand an official audit.
See Link to view the searchable database. Be patient as it takes a while to load. Be prepared to be shocked an overwhelmed.
https://fcdospending.ukcolumn.org/