[David9694]

No more lollipop ladies, close paddling pools and turning off streetlights: How budget cutting BCP Council proposes to save millions

This will be coming to your area in one shape or another.  A few items below, with more in the pipeline as they still have a £12m gap. 

No America trade deal. Still, I was reading, a possibility of an India deal next year, which will fix everything. 

Community Safety Accreditation Scheme (Save £270,000) – They aim to remove community safety officers from Poole Town Centre, Christchurch Town Centre and Boscombe.

Monitoring CCTV (Save £49,000) – Reduce live monitoring of the cameras by 15-30 per cent and to seek support from partner agencies to fund the service. This could mean cameras will no longer be watched by staff at off-peak times.
.
Switching off street lighting (Save £68,000) – Turn off streetlights after midnight to 6am on quieter residential roads within the Poole area.

School Crossing Patrol (Save £12,000) – Remove school crossing patrols from locations that have existing crossing facilities and remove school crossing patrols from locations that, following a survey, do not meet the threshold for a patrol.

https://www.dorset.live/news/dorset-news/bcp-council-savings-budget-cuts-8924988

Topic

[Eton Rifle]

Exactly.
Exactly.

The transfer of wealth to the boomers from subsequent cohorts is astonishing. It’s well worth reading The Pinch by David Willetts (yes, he’s a Tory but one with some brains, unlike the party’s current incarnation).

It makes for some shocking reading.

[Eton Rifle]

Rich_cb wrote:

Rich_cb wrote:

There’s an argument that the country would be better off if we all smoked ourselves into an early grave as we’d pay far more in tax and receive far less in pensions but morally I think aiming for a healthier populace is probably the safer bet.

You’re ALMOST there.

The answer, of course, is to invest in preventative health measures instead of allowing chronic diseases to develop and then spending billions treating those (largely) preventable diseases.

Unfortunately our current shit show of a “government” has no interest in actually improving the lives of ordinary people, which is why it bangs on about irrelevant shit like gender and refugees, instead of public health and poverty.

[Rendel Harris]

Rich_cb wrote:

Rich_cb wrote:

We’ve either got to figure out a way of spreading the associated financial burden to the older generations or see the welfare state collapse.

Not implementing halfwitted ideologically-driven referenda that reduce our GDP by 4% or £100 billion per annum (Office for Budget Responsibility, Bloomberg), roughly 75% of the pensions budget, might help.

[David9694]

But the point is Rich that

But the point is Rich that you’re no longer defending Brexit, merely distracting from it by answering a different question. The much-vaunted Brexit benefits became Brexit pluses for a while and then became nothing at all.  We’re far better off in. 

I get this sort of thing with drivers because like with Brexit the case is based on lies:

Me “4-5 people killed every day by cars, dozens more injured”

There’s a range of responses, including flat Earth denial, but a common one is “so what? People die all the time”, another is “it used to be a lot worse” (it did, it’s quite shocking).

Me “Gosh, really, so you’d definitely fly an airline with that safety record? 

And when we did have other threats to life, like work-related accidents, we did something about it with health & safety, or with diseases like polio, mumps, smallpox, diphtheria and dare I say Covid, we improved public health and rolled out vaccines.”

but by that time, they’ve come up with another distraction
 

 

 

[chrisonabike]

Wait – this isn’t the plan
Wait – this isn’t the plan already? I thought we’d been sending older people (3) to Rwanda while we have signed a deal that Rwandan refugees can come here anytime?

Just make sure they’re happy to work in the health / social care industries (or do the cleaning / food serving we don’t want to) and job done.

[hawkinspeter]

Rich_cb wrote:

Rich_cb wrote:

I think a ‘bit’ better off might be underselling it somewhat when you look at progress in the last 100 years. Virtually every advanced economy on the planet has a looming demographic crisis. We’ve either got to figure out a way of spreading the associated financial burden to the older generations or see the welfare state collapse. Unfortunately as the older generations make up an ever increasing proportion of the electorate that gets more difficult to do with every passing year.

How about we lower the voting age to 16, cap the maximum voting age to 60 and ship pensioners over to Rwanda whilst swapping them for younger refugees?

[jaymack]

If only there had been
If only there had been someone or some group of people willing at the time to suggest that utilising zero % interest rates to invest in the public realm would have been a wise use of public money. Oh, hold on a minute…

[Rich_cb]

I think a ‘bit’ better off
I think a ‘bit’ better off might be underselling it somewhat when you look at progress in the last 100 years.

Virtually every advanced economy on the planet has a looming demographic crisis. We’ve either got to figure out a way of spreading the associated financial burden to the older generations or see the welfare state collapse.

Unfortunately as the older generations make up an ever increasing proportion of the electorate that gets more difficult to do with every passing year.

[chrisonabike]

Rich_cb wrote:

Rich_cb wrote:

There’s an argument that the country would be better off if we all smoked ourselves into an early grave as we’d pay far more in tax and receive far less in pensions…

I was tickled by that one back in the day but IIRC it was criticised on the financial details as much as the ethics. (People stop when they get ill then linger with chronic illness, there *is* elasticity in demand for drugs and certainly drug addicts do shift drug use when costs go up).

Anyway the issue is we always want a cheaper lunch than is sustainable at population level. Live longer – it costs and a LOT more above a certain age as you said.
Plus we need carers because while we’re getting zet we don’t want to be caring for the old.

Rich is relative, so as we become richer we find the poor are still with us (living on our crumbs) – albeit in “the West” everyone is on balance a *bit* better off than 100 years ago. (But because “relative” we don’t feel it because there are others doing better than us.)

[hawkinspeter]

Rendel Harris wrote:

How’s the old India trade deal coming on Rich? As I recall back in July and August you were confidently telling us that it was imminent and then we would really start seeing the good old Brexit benefits…

It’s likely fairing better than the “deal” with Canada: https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2023/dec/23/hard-cheese-canada-rejects-british-attempt-to-secure-tariff-free-exports

[Hirsute]

A reform of council tax could

A reform of council tax could be a revaluation and more bands. Currently the values are related to 1 april 1991 and 2003 in wales.

Plenty of anomlies still around – I know of one area where there are no band H properties despite one or 2 having a helipad !

[Rich_cb]

There’s an argument that the
There’s an argument that the country would be better off if we all smoked ourselves into an early grave as we’d pay far more in tax and receive far less in pensions but morally I think aiming for a healthier populace is probably the safer bet.

[Rich_cb]

I think the ‘bedroom tax’
I think the ‘bedroom tax’ debacle was a real missed opportunity.

Under occupancy of social housing is a significant factor in the lack of social housing for families but due to the furore whipped up over the ‘bedroom tax’ it’s something that’s unlikely to be addressed anytime soon.

I’d allow the ‘home rich, cash poor’ to defer their payments until the house changes ownership. At that point a charge equivalent to the deferred tax would be levied.

[Rich_cb]

I agree that politically it
I agree that politically it is a very difficult move to pull off. I’d suggest packaging it up with an abolition of inheritance tax.

This will appeal to older pensioners, helpfully dividing the main group opposed to the changes and reducing the political opposition to the overall package.

[mark1a]

Rich_cb wrote:

Rich_cb wrote:

I think we need to find a way of taxing wealthy boomers and Gen Xers to provide the services which those generations are now requiring or will imminently require. Property taxes are the most obvious way IMO. Reform council tax to make it truly progressive and you’ll tap a lot of unearned property wealth and also encourage better functioning of the housing market.

I’d be interested in your thoughts on how a property tax would work, there will be a lot of people who as they get older, due to property inflation in the 2000s, will be “home rich, cash poor”, i.e. living in a modest home (with a market value of ~£750000), but getting by on state pension plus whatever other pension provisions they made. Until the auto-enrol schemes became law around 10 years ago, there’s a whole generation of people from the 80s/90s who have little or no pension provision. 

People in the home rich cash poor situation above could sell and downsize, but this won’t always be possible. Interestingly, when a similar scheme was introduced to encourage people in social housing in 4-5 bedroom houses to downsize and make their house available to larger families on the housing waiting list, the under-occupancy charge, it was described as a “bedroom tax” by opponents. 

[Author]

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