Turkeys and the morality of freezing
Eric Pickles has come over all sanctimonious since my last blog about the consequences of a proposed freeze this year on council tax and the police precept.
It’s not pretty but you can read the news item here. http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-politics-16669566
Apparently, Mr Pickles claims that councils have a ‘moral duty’ to sign up to the freeze.
As the police, councils up and down the land (Conservative as well) and our financial officers at Cornwall Council are telling us, this will create a big black, financial hole in our budget when the grant disappears, which Ministers have said it will next year. And on top of that, we could face even more cuts.
Of course, it will not be Eric Pickles in the firing line when severely disabled people, their benefits already cut by central government, find more day centres closed and support packages reduced.
Eric Pickles, on his fat Ministerial salary will not be in despair as he struggles to hold down a job and care for elderly relatives with little council support.
Eric Pickles will still be surrounded by his staff, civil servants and police protection while the rest of us will lose our neighbourhood police.
It will be local government staff – the ones left after another round of redundancies anyway, who will have to square the circle of demand for services without the funds to pay for them.
It will be local government having to decide between libraries and home helps, leisure centres and wheelchair services, maintaining footpaths and providing hand rails or stair lifts.
In Cornwall, the Lib Dems are mounting a campaign to accept the freeze with lots of people holding placards about how much they would save with the Lib Dems. Next year I look forward to some honesty and lots of placards declaring ‘My elderly mother lost her home help because of the Lib Dems’ or ‘My local library shut because of the Lib Dems’,
The Tories and many Independents have supported this drivel and I hope they think again at budget setting time. All the evidence is that accepting this freeze will make it impossible to fill the financial black hole without cutting vital services.
Freezing council tax the year before an election might be a good headline but the price will have to be paid in the end.
Local government has been told that if council tax rises by more than 3.5% this year, they must hold a referendum. That could cost more than the rise in tax itself. This is nonsensical but it will be law next year and make financing of local councils perilous.
In politics, it is easy to talk in headlines. It is even easy to mislead people by only talking about part of the truth.
Getting sanctimonious about that, running campaigns to take advantage of it, really does make a mockery of the word ‘moral’.
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