I am off skiing in the morning for a few days so you won’t hear from me until Sunday.
I am hoping to ignore the news media for a few days and read some actual books when I am not skiing or partying.
Bye for now.
Categories
Month: Mar 2007
Reading through council leader Jason Stacey’s comments on the budget just now I am struck again by the clarity of thinking he displays. Last year he set the council’s near term priorities as being:
Key points of the budget are:
- the Ealing element of council tax is set to rise by just 1.9%
- reserves up by a further £2 million
- an additional £6.1 million to be invested in improving the local environment
- including street cleansing to be increased by 75%
- an additional £1.8 million is to be spent safer communities
- including a £1 million partnership project with the local police to get 50 Police and Community Support Officers onto the streets.
It is great to see that “it does what it says on the tin”.
For the dedicated follow this link to see the whole budget report to be discussed by the full council meeting on Tuesday 6th March. Come to the town hall at 7pm to take part.
I have been working with our envirocrime team and their equivalent in Hammersmith and Fulham to try to reign in the people who are messing up our streets with plastic sign boards tie-wrapped to lamposts. I have personally visited Bar 38 in Hammersmith twice in February to berate them about their signs but for the last three Fridays the running has been taken up by the Hammersmith Palais. Their posters appeared at the junction of South Ealing Road and Little Ealing Lane today and at just about every junction down South Ealing Road and back down the A4 into Hammersmith. I must have seen at least 50 of them during my drive to work and this is only a small sample of the total.
The picture above shows three posters at the junction of Bond Street and the Broadway, taken by Ricky Wright our envirocrime protection officer for Northfield. Two fixed penalty notice were issued by Ricky today to both the venue and the promoter of their club night. I have to say though that £50 penalties are not going to change this behaviour.
The Mayor’s press people seem to be a little slow on the draw. Yesterday in a press release he was complaining about an article by Andrew Gilligan in the Evening Standard on Monday. Gilligan was in turn complaining that the Mayor was exaggerating somewhat about the benefit to young people of his freebie bus passes. The Mayor says they are worth £350 and Gilligan says £280. Anyway the Mayor laboriously explained that there is no such thing as a young person’s concessionary annual travel pass at £280 so Gilligan is the one who is wrong. The Mayor then says that most young people used to buy weekly bus passes which would be £7 each at today’s rates. He manages to multiply the weekly rate by 50 to get to the £350 benefit he is quoting.
There are two problems with this. First is that the school year typically comprises 190 days or 38 weeks. If you think in terms of the young persons’ concession being made available to get kids to school then the concession is worth £266 which is even less than Gilligan’s figure.
It gets worse though because for young people not in education the actual weekly fare is £6 not £7. So 38 weeks at £6 is £228.
The bottom line is that the Mayor couldn’t brag what a boon to people his concessions were if the fares weren’t so stupidly high in the first place. Doh! The Mayor can’t have it both ways.
Categories
Untax the poor
The ConservativeHome website has a feature called 100 policies. This is a place where Conservatives can discuss policy ideas and vote on them. My proposal to reduce the tax threshold to about £10K was published today and sparked off a lively, and mainly positive, debate. I have thought for a long time that taxing low paid people and giving them their own cash back in tax credits is barmy. Add your own voice to the debate.
Phil Taylor 