Whuch party costs you most in Council Tax? Well, according to the coming year’s figures, it’s Tory-run councils which are levying the biggest increases: a whopping 30 of the top 40 council tax rises have been imposed by the Conservatives. And one of the highest in the country was West Oxfordshire – where none other than David Cameron is the local MP!
And on what, you may ask, are these Tory councils spending these council tax increases? Here are a few choice examples:
· Conservatives on Leicestershire County Council spent £6,000 hooking up their fleet of lawn mowers to sat navs.
· Conservatives running Kent County Council were on the road to ruin when they poured £28 million on moving their Highways Department to new premises – and not a penny of it was spent on improving the roads.
· Losing money is a fine art for the Conservatives in Kent where they spent nearly £8 million on building a brand new art gallery – without a brick ever being laid.
· Conservative Bedfordshire County Council is being abolished. Did they give back taxpayers’ money they still had in the council bank account? No! They spent £250,000 on commemorative medals, a souvenir book, food for councillors and officers past and present, a service of thanksgiving, a flag-lowering ceremony and a concert.
· Conservative run Hampshire gave their HQ a makeover, with the bill coming in at £40 million. They splashed out £12,000 on installing 6 designer taps and over £1 million on new furniture, including designer desks and chairs.
· In Wokingham, the Conservatives messed up a project to build a special school. The result: costs rocketed by nearly 50% – adding £3 million to the bill.
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6 Comments
Your headline ‘Tory councils cost you more’ bears no resemblance to the text of your story, which refers to the increase in cost not to the cost.
glasshouses and stones – see Cornwall and Aberdeen for starters…….
This Government (like Governments before it), politically skews the grant system. Thus councils like Hampshire receive the lowest grant per head of population, but still manage to produce ‘low’ council tax compared to many Government favoured councils receiving huge grants. So comparing councils in this way is futile. What is needed is a reformation of the council tax system. All of the main parties still insist on having a property element in council tax and all know that because of property values, some areas of the country are ill served. The old cliche, ‘people living in the South are not necessarily rich and people living in the North are not necessarily poor’ is very true. The state pension wherever you live is the same – and yet a similar property in different areas of the country can vary by as much as five or even six bands.
If we are to keep a property based tax then there has to be regional banding or maybe a hybrid system.
Everyone uses the services provided by local government, therefore everyone should contribute the same towards paying for them. This Government, nor any succeeding Government should expect householders to pay more for those services that other sections of the community.
I agree with David Boothroyd (for once).
This is silly populist party political knocking, and not a serious analysis.
For example, when the “satnavs for lawnmowers” story first came up, I looked into what it really involved and actually it sounded to me like a reasonably sensible system. After that, I cannot trust a word on the rest of what is written here.
In any case, given the limited power of local government, the extent to which “the Conservatives” may be limited.
This silly party political knocking is what is turning people off politics. It is a big contributory factor to the crisis we are now seeing – a crisis which could today see a major rise in support for grossly unacceptable political parties (I do not use the word “fascist” because I reserve that word for its true meaning – a supporter of political systems where all power is given to one person, so properly anyone who supports directly elected executive mayors is a fascist, someone who is a vile racist but supports collective decision making is not).
If we want to restore credibility to democracy, we must change the way we do things. That means concentrating on positive political messages, and seriously presenting people with the options and admitting to the limitations any government must face. Not “yah boo sucks, we can solve all the world’s problems, and the others are all evil people whose only desire is to bleed you dry for their own personal aggrandisement”.
Gordon Brown, with his clunking fist and dour demeanour would make a good speaker!
LibDem could be a good party if they have been given the opportunity to govern the nation. but the question is does today’s society really care about what happens to others? Everyone now thinks about their pocket and the wellbeing of their families. Let LIBDEM under Nick Clegg stick together in honesty, transparency, loyalty, truthfulness and in solidarity for it’s only this basis shall they succeed.
A.A