Great minds think alike?

[fpb]

Certainly some minds do, although I am not sure whether I would characterize them as great. In order not to raise national taxes, Messrs. Blair and Brown have stealthily caused local taxes (based on property value) to grow by as much as 300%. And now news comes from Italy that Mr.Berlusconi and his unlovely government, who claim to be cutting

Comments

You're Wrong - Part 1

[anonymous]

Delete this if you want, but you're wrong and as a public policy analyst at the London School of Economics, it's my duty to correct you (even a self-educated man must accept a little help now and again):

1) You're original post was that the community charge was increased by Blair. It wasn't because increases to the community charge are not (as I said) within his direct control. There are no commitments on local authorities forcing them to invest in infrastructure and to the extent that they wish to maintain schools and local services, the central government allocation is sufficient for that task. The problem is that local councillors make commitments to increase and improve local schools and financing that involves direct revenue from the local community. The reason for this is because historically, local authorities have been very poor in terms of anticipating and planning for local needs on a long-term basis. Partly that is a result of revenue inefficiences that pre-date even Thatcher and Blair but are instead a function of the introduction of the Welfare State in the 1940s, but mainly it's because the political system in Great Britain operates only to the short-term and is prohibitive of long-term investment.

2) If you're going to defend Ken Livingstone then I suppose that means you condone his own use of 'hidden' taxes against the London population? The Congestion Charge is nothing more than a fine for people who live in Central London and don't want to use public transport. Added to that, Livingstone is robbing Londoners again by making a series of inflation beating fare increases to public transport for the next five years (when he'd previously promised only three). I'm not surprised that you support Livingstone. He's a lying bastard as well. As for Raynesford's collar on local government spending, to a degree it's worked. Councils are reining in. The problem is that it's boring news so the papers don't report it. So much better to run stories about pensioners going hungry because of the council tax and the gullible, like you, fall for it.

3) If Private Eye is the source of your political knowledge then I'm not surprised at your crass statements. I note you're relying on a 1997 edition to 'support' your case. PFI has moved on a long way from then and is more sophisticated and cost effective. Public procurement was more prone to abuse whilst it remained under the control of local authorities because public contractors all too often were not reined in or tied to their budgeted costs. The result was greater inefficiency. To the extent that the private sector is performing the same functions, on the whole the structure of PFI is sophisticated enough that it's more
likely to reflect the actual costs of performing these services. You are obviously one of those people who live in cloud cuckoo land where you get something for nothing. The real world doesn't work like that and if you had a real job, you'd probably realise it.