Religion and Ethics Forum
General Category => Politics & Current Affairs => Topic started by: Walt Zingmatilder on January 19, 2017, 10:33:29 PM
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Secular Britain on the spot. Asking the residents of well healed Surrey if they want to pay for social services in a local referendum.
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Secular Britain on the spot. Asking the residents of well healed Surrey if they want to pay for social services in a local referendum.
Oh ffs give it a bleedin rest.
Anyway it's capitalist, in a bit of a financial hole Britain on the spot.
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If the thread originator, with his habitual misunderstanding of 'secular', didn't do it, "well-healed" would have done it on its own.
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Secular Britain on the spot. Asking the residents of well healed Surrey if they want to pay for social services in a local referendum.
Will only "secularists" be voting in it?
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Secular Britain on the spot. Asking the residents of well healed Surrey if they want to pay for social services in a local referendum.
Oh give it a rest Vlad - what on earth has this to do with secularism.
There are some important issues here (none of which have anything to do with separation of church and state).
To my mind this is a really challenging issue as our whole approach to financing local services is through a dual funding mechanism - where there is a block grant from central government and the relevant council also raises money locally. The underlying reason is that different parts of the country have differing needs in terms of services and expenditure and different abilities to generate tax revenue locally due to wealth differential.
This referendum jeopardised that principle - on the basis that it is shifting the balance from central to local government, running the risk that affluent areas (which greater capacity to raise money locally and withstand a 15% council tax hike) are able to fund services properly. While poorer areas where this approach will never work as the local people simply do not have sufficient wealth to fill the gap in funding from central government end up with increasingly substandard services.
Central government is supposed to deal with this issue by redistribution of tax raised nationally to local areas on the basis of need.
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And Vlad, it is "heeled" not "healed".
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This referendum jeopardised that principle - on the basis that it is shifting the balance from central to local government, running the risk that affluent areas (which greater capacity to raise money locally and withstand a 15% council tax hike) are able to fund services properly. While poorer areas where this approach will never work as the local people simply do not have sufficient wealth to fill the gap in funding from central government end up with increasingly substandard services.
While I agree with the point that are making, there is something welcome in this referendum. It is a (very small) challenge to the crippling over-centralisation which permeated the British system of government. To a very great extent, "local government" is little more than an agency which delivers services micro-managed from Westminster.
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While I agree with the point that are making, there is something welcome in this referendum. It is a (very small) challenge to the crippling over-centralisation which permeated the British system of government. To a very great extent, "local government" is little more than an agency which delivers services micro-managed from Westminster.
I understand what you mean - the problem is that we have fair too large a gap between levels of government in much of this country - so effectively after Surrey you get the UK government.
A solution would be properly regional devolution, including revenue raising powers. This would help to smooth out the kinds of income differentials that we see at local government level.
So this does happen in some parts of the country. So for example although Newham in London is achingly poor and would really struggle to raise sufficient money for its service needs from its local residents, having a London-wide authority with greater fiscal powers would smooth this over as that authority could decide that redistribution from Kensington to Newham is appropriate, and both are relatively local to each other, compared to the whole country.
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IMHO this is turning Council tax back into the Poll Tax. It is Thatcherism. A example from history is Brent Council, who in the early nineties took the view that their residents wanted lower Community Charge bills, so they turned off a large number of the borough street lamps.
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Surrey is a big area, Vlad, with some grotty places so not all well-heeled or healed.
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I don't recommend Redhill. Or Epsom. People slag off Croydon, but at least its easy to get out of.