It however does not surprise me that some councils in the North east and Midlands are up in arms about government spending cuts...
BBC.
Councils in the North of England and the Midlands face being hardest hit by government funding cuts, a group representing local authorities says.The clue is of course in the last sentence, the councils bitching about the cuts are of course overspending Labour Councils who seem to have a real problem when it comes to giving value for money along with spending like there was no tomorrow on various things that people don't really need.
The Special Interest Group of Municipal Authorities says councils in the North East will lose £665 per person an average between 2010 and 2018 compared to a loss in the South East of £305.
Its estimates take into account the impact of welfare changes.
Ministers say funding is "fair" and the report was a "crude lobbying exercise".
In December, the government will tell councils in England how much money they will get next year.
SIGOMA, which has 45 members, represents many of the big urban councils in England, the vast majority Labour run.
As ever expect vital services to be cut ahead of non vital to try and force a government to tip up more. Expect to see dustbin men paid off whilst diversity co-ordinators and five a day nutrition specialists remain. Schools will close, but payments to minority groups will remain despite the fact that the money isd wasted frivolously on keeping their relatives employed.
No, socialist Labour run councils have proven time and time again that they are utter spendthrifts when it comes to taxpayer and ratepayer funds and often have the highest levels of council tax in the country. If there are savings to be made, that's where they will be found, not in efficiently run low council tax boroughs.
4 annotations:
I did a couple of posts on this a while back. We live in a traditional Labour area and our local councilors were moaning about the unfair cuts when compared to Tory areas.
My response to the council centered on two things. The first was the amount of money Labour spends on things it doesn't need to. I gave a very long list of examples. Some were brushed off as small expenses, others as required by national laws and others ignored altogether.
The second was how they were fiddling the figures. I looked at the money being given to Tory councils mentioned, before the cuts, as a percentage by head of population and demographic mix.
For example, one Tory council with a much lower percentage of cuts than ours was made up of mainly older people and had a much smaller population. Therefore, they would have been recieving a lot less money to begin with, making thier cut percentage a lot lower.
As you say, the don't want to spend less so they take the 'blame the Tories' option.
And as you also say, they refuse to cut waste. They've cut back on street cleaners but insist on keeping 'free' leisure because it will apparently save money on healthcare in the future. It won't save money on mine though. As a formerly paying customer, I can't get a look in now it's 'free'.
Our council was given £300k to improve bus services.
They are spending it on bus-lane 'enforcement cameras'. They could've spent it on removing some of the chicanes etc. that they put in that stop buses actually getting to these lanes.
We had a perfectly good library, but our labour council decided, at a cost of a few million, to pull it down and build a new one, meantime they've cut frontline services.
Still look on the bright side we've still got a library...hohum
The underlining problem as I see it is, the Councils' can take your monies and spend it on anything that they want. And there is nothing you can do about it !
If however, we had a system by which the rate payers were able to set their own level of rates and, demand on what those rates are to be spent on, would that be a better system do you think ?
Its something they do in Switzerland so it isn't as far fetched as you might think.
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