Council docked government funding over ripped out bike lane

If you think about it, it is bizarre that you can store one form of private property - cars - on government land for free. I think I’ll just put my spare boxes from the attic on the street.

alternatively, I’ll buy a horse and expect the council to provide somewhere to store it

"alternatively, I’ll buy a horse and expect the council to provide somewhere to store it"

If you have 'Common Land' near you, then you can normally keep and graze your animals there for free.

Sounds good - well done them.

RoubaixCube wrote:

Thats ok. Shoreham council will just introduce a new stealth tax or raise council tax even more to cover the shortfall.

For example. Where i live, the local authorities made it so you have to buy a parking permit to park on the street outside your house. Not being satisfied with the money they were making from that. They decided to add another tax that would rob from you another £50-100+ a year (i think its a year) if you had a car with a more powerful motor - I think it was £88 for a 2L engine but i will have to double check.

All councils have been cut to the bone due to unnecessary austerity the last 11 years and parking is one of the few ways they can claw some desparately needed money back.

The money saved from Austerity has been passed to friends/bribe givers of those in power (and those in power themselves as the general public have recently found out) and has done pretty much nothing else (apart from wrecking the country).

I think citing the Tax Payers 'Alliance', an organisation concerned with saving the pennies that billionaires actually bother to pay in tax, funded by rich overseas donors channelled through fake charities to avoid paying tax themselves claiming to exist to make tax matters transparent is not the best source when you want to whine about where your tax goes.

Is the information wrong?

If it's not then the source of the information is irrelevant.

Those sorts of statement are meaningless.
You may as well say minus 5% of council tax is spent on car parks.
It's just a basic failure to understand how local government is funded.

I disagree.

If politicians in the past had made the decision to reduce the generosity of council pensions then the burden of those pensions on council budgets would be reduced.

If it's ok to criticise so called 'austerity' then surely it's ok to criticise other political decisions which have impacted council budgets?

You disagree that it is a meaningless measure?

Why stop with pensions? Why not cut pay or other services or stop certain services
Given that pay is 75-80% of expenditure and there is a need to recruit and retain staff, why do you think cutting pensions further would achieve a good result?

Yes.

It's perfectly reasonable to question any aspect of public expenditure.

I can't see any reason why public sector pensions should not be included in that.

Question things by all means but don't come up with spurious % that are reached by a failure to understand local government financing.

Any policy that affects a pay package needs to be carefully evaluated as to the consequences.
Don't forget that pensions have already been reduced by changes to schemes and changes to employee contributions.

By stating the figure as a percentage of council tax income rather than total income it will appear larger but regardless of what denominator you use the numerator is still very large and needs to be included in any conversation about council financing.

But it's clearly a way to get casual readers to falsely think that 20% of spending is on pensions, so should be challenged.
You can debate pensions but you need to consider the impact on recruitment and retention.

You may as well say 1 in 6 £ is spent on NI - let's reduce those payments and benefits.

Alternatively it's an effective way to communicate the scale of spending on pensions to those who pay council tax.

There will be an effect on recruitment and retention, personally I'd like to see pay rises for public sector workers in areas with many unfilled vacancies and pay cuts for those in heavily oversubscribed jobs.

No it isn't an effective way as it fails to understand (deliberately) how local councils are funded.

It's way to stir people up though, which is why the figures are dishonest.

Take Ipswich https://www.ipswich.gov.uk/sites/www.ipswich.gov.uk/files/ibc_council_ta...

149M income 149M spend of which 14.5M is council tax. Using council tax as your base is dishonest.

If people want to pay less council tax, as I imagine many TPA supporters do, then knowing how each area of council spending relates to council tax contributions is useful.

I think "dishonest" is too much of a stretch, disingenuous perhaps but even that is arguable.

Pretty sure using a base which is 10% of your revenue to base your spend on is dishonest.

Again you are ignoring the point that you need to understand how local government is financed not cherry pick an income stream to suit your agenda.

I'm not ignoring the point, I've acknowledged it multiple times on this thread.

I just happen to disagree about the appropriateness of using council tax revenue as a denominator.

Should councils break their contractual obligations to pay pensions? What about Scottish Widows, should they just decide not to pay out pensions? Should retired people go without food?

Instead of trying to be a barrack room lawyer, maybe just think for 3 seconds before tapping out something daft with your keyboard.

Not sure where you got any of that from?

Maybe just think for 3 seconds before you tap out something daft?

Think? Think before spouting?

A leftie clycling fascist on Road.cc?

How DARE you, Sir?!

.

If information is correct and worth sharing, then surely it's easy to source it  from an organisation that's not completely discredited, not a front for other interests, not shadily funded, not engaged in an organised smear campaign and illegal sacking of a whistleblower, and especially - given the current climate of sleaze  - not a private company inexplicably given free rein inside Downing Street.  

Citing another source should be easy; and preferable; and won't look like you (or 'Garage at Large') endorse corruption. 

Might also be more supportive of an argument to use a source that, even if it didn't have the other drawbacks you cite, was less than fourteen years old.

Facts are facts regardless of who says them.

Attacking the source of a an uncomfortable fact is usually just a tactic to avoid acknowledging said fact.

Rich_cb wrote:

Facts are facts regardless of who says them. Attacking the source of a an uncomfortable fact is usually just a tactic to avoid acknowledging said fact.

The source is totally disingenuous though, because it says one pound in five of council tax is spent on pensions, but in fact councils have three streams of revenue, council tax (52%), government grant (31%) and business rates (17%), so in fact only one pound in ten of total council income is spent on pensions, a figure roughly comparable with what central government spends (12%). Focussing solely on a revenue stream that comprises just over half of income is a dishonest way of making things seem more significant than they are; might as well say "50% of business rates are spent on pensions", it would be as true and as deliberately misleading as the TPA claims.

I've already acknowledged that.

The numerator is still large enough to warrant debate regardless of the denominator chosen.

Rich_cb wrote:

I've already acknowledged that. The numerator is still large enough to warrant debate regardless of the denominator chosen.

So to be clear, you do acknowledge that the statement used by Nigel to support his argument for removing council pensions that one pound in five of council tax goes on pensions is, in fact, a lie? 

I would not say a lie, just that it is meaningless. A bit like saying the average household pays X vat a year. A valid piece of arithmetic but also meaningless.