Three-quarters of council spending will be supporting the 3-5% of the population - adults and children - who are looked after in some way by the local council. An this isn’t enough.
The roof of the problem lies in your highlighted fact that the majority of council expenditure goes in supporting the lives of some 3-5% of the population. Our problem is the country’s huge dependency culture. I accept that there will always some people who will genuinely be in that position. But it is unsustainable, and wrong, that we have up to 1 in 20 of the population in a state of dependency. Until this is tackled the problem will only get worse. The easiest bit should be the supply side benefit that would come from crushing the nimbies who contribute to homelessness.
Your fundamental problem is that democracy uses ‘electoral politics’ as its proxy for addressing problems.
Electoral politics and democracy are not the same thing but there’s a largely unchallenged view (that I disagree with) that says that it’s mischievous to challenge the legitimacy of electoral politics in this proxy role because it’s the least-worst option that is available.
And electoral politics has not adapted well to interactive media, cameras in parliament or the capacity of pressure groups to disrupt electoral politics or to take ownership of large parts of the public sphere.
I have a suggestion for what a better alternative could look like but it’s very hard to get anyone’s attention to listen to it.
This is key in my view as inflation briefly approached 11% in the last year "without conducting a referendum". The least bad taxes are consumption taxes, income taxes and taxes on land values. Ok, Council Tax is far from perfect but is the closest to a land value tax on residential properties as we currently have and yet no Councils had the cojones to go to a referendum simply to get an inflation matching rise in revenue in order to fund Adult Social Care and Childrens Services.
Not one.
Scum now, the lot of them.
For sure, they may have lost a local referendum, but we'll never know 'cos the culture has changed. Councillors don't want to ask difficult questions of their electorate, they want someone else, in this case central government, to solve their financial problems. Dependency culture has grown like bacteria, from individual cells, to island pockets, to the whole frigging dish that is the council level.
The roof of the problem lies in your highlighted fact that the majority of council expenditure goes in supporting the lives of some 3-5% of the population. Our problem is the country’s huge dependency culture. I accept that there will always some people who will genuinely be in that position. But it is unsustainable, and wrong, that we have up to 1 in 20 of the population in a state of dependency. Until this is tackled the problem will only get worse. The easiest bit should be the supply side benefit that would come from crushing the nimbies who contribute to homelessness.
Is there not a fourth choice: reduce the requirement for those services to be provided at the current levels?
Isn't dependency culture a direct consequence of the de-industrialisation that has been evident over the lat 40-50 years?
Your fundamental problem is that democracy uses ‘electoral politics’ as its proxy for addressing problems.
Electoral politics and democracy are not the same thing but there’s a largely unchallenged view (that I disagree with) that says that it’s mischievous to challenge the legitimacy of electoral politics in this proxy role because it’s the least-worst option that is available.
And electoral politics has not adapted well to interactive media, cameras in parliament or the capacity of pressure groups to disrupt electoral politics or to take ownership of large parts of the public sphere.
I have a suggestion for what a better alternative could look like but it’s very hard to get anyone’s attention to listen to it.
This is key in my view as inflation briefly approached 11% in the last year "without conducting a referendum". The least bad taxes are consumption taxes, income taxes and taxes on land values. Ok, Council Tax is far from perfect but is the closest to a land value tax on residential properties as we currently have and yet no Councils had the cojones to go to a referendum simply to get an inflation matching rise in revenue in order to fund Adult Social Care and Childrens Services.
Not one.
Scum now, the lot of them.
For sure, they may have lost a local referendum, but we'll never know 'cos the culture has changed. Councillors don't want to ask difficult questions of their electorate, they want someone else, in this case central government, to solve their financial problems. Dependency culture has grown like bacteria, from individual cells, to island pockets, to the whole frigging dish that is the council level.
Imv, of course.