House prices and taxes

benood

carolt wrote: »

Eh?

What's that got to do with living in a state with some public services?

Are you suggesting Britain is a Communist state?

Baffled.

Please explain.

Oh sorry I was just jumping to conclusions in the way that you do when reading posts you disagree with - you seemed to suggest that I would like to go back to living with Victorian levels of government intervention - I simply applied similar logic to your point of view. Out of interest how did you know what my ideal was?

Cleaver

chris_spackman wrote: »

Who are you to say that anyones opinion is bad?

I was voted in to the position by other forum members back in 2006.

olly300

chris_spackman wrote: »

You are one of the few people i have come by who thinks that Councils and Mp's are 'worth' the work they do. My council was on the radio about the council tax and last year 60k people had a visit to the local court for non payment, not due to not wanting too, i am sure very few want to pay it and this year my council expects to take twice that to court this year and the guy said he does not feel any form of sympathy for these people. What a complete !!!!. These people who sit in town halls are just like MP's, they have no idea what we are up against and they don't care. We pay too much in tax and the council are a law in their own right and seem to do what they like with no answer to anyone. How sad that people are loosing jobs and business', wages will not go up, wages may drop yet tax goes up.

The reason they don't care is that the administration and penalties of council tax is covered by this Act of parliament -
http://www.opsi.gov.uk/acts/acts1992/ukpga_19920014_en_1
-and others.

Basically apart from the initial rate everything about council tax has a lot to do with and is in the control of central government.

StevieJ

chris_spackman wrote: »

Who are you to say that anyones opinion is bad?

Hope you have some luck with the job hunting.

chris_spackman

StevieJ wrote: »

Hope you have some luck with the job hunting.

Thank you for your kind words.

It is hard, in my local paper there are pages upon pages of jobs but there is only this week and the past week been only 3-4 and how funny that will all my rants about the council there are mainly jobs working for Bournemouth council!!

nickmason

olly300 wrote: »

The reason they don't care is that the administration and penalties of council tax is covered by this Act of parliament -
http://www.opsi.gov.uk/acts/acts1992/ukpga_19920014_en_1
-and others.

Basically apart from the initial rate everything about council tax has a lot to do with and is in the control of central government.

agree almost entirely with this - except that the suggestion that the rate of council tax is set by local councils is also not necessarily the case. Yes, it has some freedom, but for many many councils the combination of statutory obligations, reduced central government funding, and capping from central government means that there's little scope for changing council tax.

Our opposition in North Dorset voted for our budget (and so the rise in council tax), to illustrate that there was absolutely nothing political/discretionary within it. We then took a cross-party lobby/petition to government - who basically said "oh yes, you've got a point, you're in a complete bind there through no fault of your own and entirely because of our policies...but no, please carry on, we're not going to recognise publicly what we've done to you, or even agree to change it"

chris_spackman

One thing that should be looked at is the jobs created by councils that have no meaning. Some councils come up with great names for some jobs but what is it they do.

When people live by the law, work hard and pay their way it is not nice to see them up in front of a judge because they fall behind with council tax payments. To suggest that some spend their money on drink, fags etc and so can't pay is not fair. Lets look at everything else you have to pay to live such as feeding and clothing your family, heating your home, running a caretc. Some are better off than others and the ones who aren't so well off will fall behind on things through NO FAULT of their own.

If someone is paid huge sums of money it does not mean that they will do a good job. The issue is that the money these people get paid is OUR money.

It is also poor value for money when they go on strike demanding a pay rise and if they get their own way we have to pay more in the tax.

stephen163

The only constructive argument you can make about the inefficiencies of council workers is that they operate in an uncompetitive market, thus suffer though lack of competition (get fat, lazy and complecent). However, a lot of council functions are now being tendered out to the private sector and surely you would have to agree this is a more efficient allocation of council tax payer's money?

The bits left are sometimes unavoidable. Inefficiencies will creep in, but I would argue that this supports the case for attracting strong leadership from the same pool the private sector recruit from. How can you expect to do this by offering the role at substantially below what the private sector pays?

beingjdc

chris_spackman wrote: »

One thing that should be looked at is the jobs created by councils that have no meaning. Some councils come up with great names for some jobs but what is it they do.

So because you don't understand something, it's not worthwhile?

Here are some job titles I don't understand. I can hazard a guess, but I have no idea what they actually do.

Senior Subsea Intervention Engineer
Controls Based Management Technician
Interface, Change, and Weight Co-ordinator
Slickline Supervising Operator

Are they pointless? I doubt it, otherwise the oil industry wouldn't be advertising for them.