[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

[Rich_cb]

It was a discussion about the
It was a discussion about the cost of rejoining.

To rejoin would lead to us paying over £20bn a year to the EU. Some would admittedly come back but the rebate would be no more.

The UK’s inflation post COVID/Ukraine hasn’t been particularly unusual compared to the rest of Europe. Quite a few EU countries have had far worse inflation than us.

[wycombewheeler]

Rich_cb wrote:

Rich_cb wrote:

Paying 10s of billions per year to a political organisation in order to secure marginally better trade terms doesn’t seem like a great deal to me.

we were never paying 10s of billions

the leave campaign quoted figure of £350m per week, would be 18.2 billion.

However, the £350m calculated UK contribution included approximately £100m that never left in the form of the rebate negotiated by Thatchers government. About half of the rest came back to the UK in forms of various subsidies (for agriculture, education, research and assisting deprived areas etc)

So to maintain the current support to UK regions, agriculture, research and education, UK government would have to replaxce this funding and the net saving would amount to approx £125m a week (£6.5bn a year), or £2 per person per week. Impact on food prices of brexit has likely cost everyone in the country over £2 per week, before any consideration of lost trade.

To leave for purely financial reasons stinks of Trussonomics.

[Rich_cb]

Well that depends on your
Well that depends on your definition of ‘confidently assuring’…

[mattw]

David9694 wrote:

I struggled to find any reliable information about the value/ scale of British winemaking – so interested in the source for £600m. 

Pieces I read left the slightly awkward taste that some of this apparent prosperity is on the back of climate change – I tend to think that if ever you think you’re gaining there, it will be stripped away ten-fold. 

Perhaps Sir Tim Wetherspoon of Brexit will be the first out of the traps with a 1 pint wine presentation?

£600m is about right for exports, but it includes some value added products – ie processed in the UK.
https://www.statista.com/statistics/303550/uk-united-kingdom-wine-exports-value-annually/

English produced wine is about 12-15m bottles per annum at a ballpark price of £25-£30 each, which gives ~£400m for English produced wine (Wales, Scotland, NI being rounding errors). This is exported, but not yet on a large scale. 

French wine companies are buying up vineyards here.

[mattw]

Care to explain what a local

Care to explain what a local Council lead by Lib Dems and Independents running itself into the ground has to do with Brexit?

[David9694]

Council tax bills could rise

Council tax bills could rise by ten per cent as Somerset Council seeks to avoid bankruptcy

More than £35m of savings could be made on top

https://www.somersetlive.co.uk/news/somerset-news/council-tax-bills-could-rise-9023646

here’s the list: 

Abolishing the council-run CCTV services across Somerset town centres (£652,000)
Increasing car parking charges with inflation (£400,000)
Closing some libraries by 2026 (£380,000)
Closing all public toilets (£301,000)
Restrict recycling sites to Somerset residents by introducing a permit system (£235,000)
Review supported accommodation for vulnerable residents to ensure the providers deliver value for money (£200,000)
Increasing the cost of using the Lifeline service (£195,000)
Keeping the Octagon Theatre closed until the new business case is approved (£174,000)
Installing no new play equipment until mid-2025 (£168,000)
Closing the Yeovil Recreation Centre (£165,000)
Cutting funding for grass cutting and gully clearing (£150,000)
Scrap four new staff to support children with special needs (£132,000)
Ending ongoing subsidy to the Brewhouse Theatre in Taunton
Ending school crossing patrols (£41,000)
Ceasing to lock Blenheim Gardens in Minehead, Wellington Country Park in Wellingtonand Vivary Park in Taunton at night (£15,000)

[David9694]

I struggled to find any

I struggled to find any reliable information about the value/ scale of British winemaking – so interested in the source for £600m. 

Pieces I read left the slightly awkward taste that some of this apparent prosperity is on the back of climate change – I tend to think that if ever you think you’re gaining there, it will be stripped away ten-fold. 

Perhaps Sir Tim Wetherspoon of Brexit will be the first out of the traps with a 1 pint wine presentation?

[jaymack]

You and Hari Seldon both! 

You and Hari Seldon both! 

[RDaneel]

Rich_cb wrote:

Rich_cb wrote:

The point is that no tariffs has helped make them incredibly wealthy. Free trade tends to do that. If the EU were just a trade bloc I’d be in favour of membership but it is both a trade bloc and a political organisation. Paying 10s of billions per year to a political organisation in order to secure marginally better trade terms doesn’t seem like a great deal to me.

Geography, history and trade policy has made them rich not just a simplistic remove all tariffs idea. If removing tariffs truly made countries rich every country would follow suit as its a really easy thing to do.  

So the free trade we enjoyed in the EU along with all those FTA’s is only marginal, but free trade would make the U.K. enormously rich? 
 

Adding in this edit. 
In case anyone is interested in how Singapore actually got rich and coming as a shock to no one except the Singapore on Thames idiots amongst us, it ain’t the removal of all tariffs. As always it’s rather more complex than the simplism people like to propogate. 
 

[David9694]

Are you conidently telling us

Are you confidently assuring us that you are reduced to silly rhetorical questions? 

[chrisonabike]

It’s a state secret! 

It’s a state secret!  Everyone knows Putin has been stockpiling wine – we don’t want to let him know how quick we’ll run dry or he might exploit the wine gap.

This explains the undercover operation by Special Forces to supply wine to Downing Street during Covid in a suitcase.

[hawkinspeter]

The Tories are acting

The Tories are acting suspiciously about their wine reserves – first they propose having pints of wine and now they’re delaying telling us how much wine they drank during lockdown (presumably trying to delay until the upcoming general election)

https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2023/dec/29/uk-ministers-asked-to-explain-fourth-delay-to-covid-wine-cellar-report

[wtjs]

There’s some winemaking in

There’s some winemaking in Wales..

There is indeed, and this one is using sheep’s wool in an interesting way. Good luck to them

[jaymack]

A fairly decent red all the

A fairly decent red all the way from Abergavenny, well a nice bike ride from Abergavenny at any rate. The Sugarloaf vineyard’s a great place for a cafe stop too!  

https://sugarloafvineyards.co.uk/shop/ols/products/deri-coch-red-wine

[Rich_cb]

Are you confidently assuring
Are you confidently assuring me that those OBR forecasts are going to be exactly right?

[Author]

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