Lack of visibility

As I walked past the Town Hall this morning the only sign of a strike was a lone placard leaning against the wall next to the back door.^[1] I thought about wandering down to the nasty modern building that has many more actual council workers in it to see if there was a better turn out there but decided against. Unison obviously wasn't really making an effort. They missed the prime opportunity to be visible as people arrive at the various bus and tram stops near the Town Hall on their way to offices or streaming past to the station. The chances to put their case to people lost. I don't really support this strike anyway, while yes they are getting low pay rises this year, so are most of the rest of us. The economy is screwed and while I understand that they say that they haven't had decent pay rises in previous years when the country wasn't feeling the pinch, it seems somewhat foolish to hold your biggest strike in years when there isn't any money.

I am much more disappointed that I haven't seen anyone in uniform for the TA's centennial 'Uniform to Work Day' I hope that if I go out for lunch I will get to see people being proud of this very important work they do.

^[1]I think you go in that door if you want to licence your taxi or register a birth, marriage or death. As I have never done any of these things I am not 100% sure.

Will this be as magic as their roundabout?

It is difficult to be definitive about the announcement from Swindon about withdrawing from the local "safety camera" partnership. They point out things that are demonstrably true, such as the money goes to the treasury, but also point at research into the statistics, which without seeing the figures is impossible to comment on. So it is impossible to say if they are the sane ones fighting against the camera stazi or if they are truly feckless endangerers of their resident's lives.

The council's position, that they think the $400,000 will be better spent on other measures is the key point and it would be nice to know that they have thought this through and are actually putting the public's safety first. As I understand it the economic argument is much less clear cut, given that while the revenue from the cameras heads to Westminster the money in question here will have originally been a grant from central government. I do hope that Swindon release the statistics they are basing this on, they may well already have done, I can't see them on swindon.gov.uk or in any of the press reports (the later being of no surprise, even if they have been released) and I will be interested to see what measures they will use instead. I think that both sides are probably somewhat correct cameras help, in some places, but you need other measures elsewhere.

The last point the coverage raises is if Swindon Borough Council are giving £.4m to Wiltshire & Swindon Safety Camera Partnership and the rest of Wiltshire is giving £1.2m how many real live human traffic police could you get for the £1.6 million pounds?

Of course they could just build more of these.

London has appeared to have developed an annoying whine

Ok so I don't live in London, the mayoralty is still important, the capital can quite often be the only part of the country tourists see, the Olympics are coming up oh and like the rest of the country I'm having to stump up cash for the place.

So while Boris is so far an unproven force in running the city, he did win an election, fair and square. Yet the Internet is alive with people complaining about the how the result came about. The first group are just plain bitter and nasty, they are the ones infecting the place (especially commenting on sites like the BBC and Comment is Free) with complaints that Boris got in due to all the people in the suburbs who voted for him, They aren't proper Londoners, they don't have the right Postcodes, winge winge. To the best of my knowledge the definition of the bounds of Greater London haven't changed dramatically since 1965 so these have always been the people electing the umbrella layer of local government, even in the days of the GLC. But I don't recall any lobbying  for them to not be part of the Authority before so this must be just sour grapes.

The other set of whimpering is about the voting system and that it caused problems. Some people such as the greens are even saying their supporters were too stupid to vote for them which seams a bit ungracious if you ask me. I think civics lessons are a good idea in general, but I don't think how to vote should trouble the curriculum for too much of the total time for them, given that it is a really simple process. I will be eagerly awaiting the report on the counts that will be produced by ORG but so far no-one is reporting chaos on the scale of the Scottish elections of last year, so I doubt that it really was such an issue.

Highly charged debate

There is a lot of hot air being expelled about how councils are raising money through charging for things like parking and other services. The headlines are all about the statistic that "One in four town halls now get more income from charges" rather than the overall figure that such charges raise half as much as council tax (£11 billion a year as opposed to £22 billion). The generally moderate news sources are mostly reporting on how the charging varies wildly across the country and the Audit Commission's recommendation for transparency in the methodologies by which the charges are calculated. Of course the radically right wing rags are shouting about them being stealth taxes, they are of course the exact opposite, as if someone could be fooled into not noticing the money they put in the parking meter or that the price of a child swim has gone up 50p and how variable charging for services based on income and assets is a heinous, iniquitous punishment for having acquired money.
Of course Council Tax only pays for a tiny amount of council services and all this money has to come from somewhere doesn't it, whether it is charges, indirect or direct taxation. Time for a proper look at local taxation and how much central government has control over spending priorities, I think; as it seems no one is happy with the status quo.

The taxing issue of local finance

Today's Tory policy announcement is on the ever thorny issue of Council Tax and the idea that council tax level should be capped by central government but with a loophole allowing voters to approve a rise in a local referendum.
This will happen just after the turkeys have voted for Christmas!
Labour have responded suggesting you could probably do all this under current laws, but that isn't the same as a reasoned argument against the plan now is it, while Vince Cable of the Lib Dems is under the impression that no one is ever allowed to change their mind, so the Tories can never have another policy on Local Taxation ever again, oh and by the way doesn't local income tax sound fair. Well on the surface yes, but if you think of an inner city London Borough with a high proportion of people on benefits and taking other council services, those who do have well paid jobs will be paying a far higher proportional amount of tax than their friends in councils with a better average wage and level of benefit recipients, this will make them move out and set up an explosive positive feedback loop.
So what do I think the alternative is? Give up the pretence that the council tax gives an element of local accountability and abolish it. For my local council, Sheffield, council tax only contributed to 13% of the gross expenditure, so any single figure percentage increase or decrease in the tax itself is less than a single percentage point change to the council's overall budget. Why bother, why not just lob it onto central income tax and give out the money proportionately^[1], it gives the fairness of income based taxation without the potential problem of driving earners out of poor councils. Councils still get to decide what they are spending the money on in areas they are allowed leeway by central government (few) and with just as much ideological link to the people who voted for them as now (almost none :-). What about business taxes? Well they are covered by the "National Non-Domestic Rates" system, the level of which is centrally set and although collected by local councils, is redistributed by central government based on headcount. So this could easily stay as it is, although it may be more efficient to hand over collection to HM Treasury if it is nationally redistributed.

^[1]I have glibly just said "proportionately" this would probably need to be a quite clever formula to take into account the demographics of a particular council.