Why no cut for the Greater London Authority?

tim_wand

Could someone less cynical and maybe more knowledgeable than me tell me why when the Government has announced a reduction of 2.9% in Government funding to all local authorities , this does not apply to the GLA?

I'm feed up with all the London Centric politics and funding . (Olympics/ HS1 ) HS2 will only get the go ahead if it means people get from Birmingham and Manchester to London quicker, not versa visa)

If any of you southern softie shandy drinking shites don't agree you can come up here and I ll empty my bin on ya.

Oh and by the way the North Got Le Tour grand departe.

Still I suppose if the Tories keep you sweet in LUOUNDONNN you ll get to keep Boris.

Mikey23

Cos london is the centre of the universe ... Innit

Guanajuato

To keep Boris on side, otherwise there'll be a leadership challenge for the nasty party.

BillyMansell

You are not alone tim, no less than Vince Cable shares your concerns if not your approach to dealing with southern softies.

tim_wand

Im really beginning to like Vince Cable.

Even though I m a postie and he pushed through our privatisation, but so far so good.

Wasn't Cable the only one who spoke up about Murdoch when News Corps wanted to buy BskyB and it cost him his job because of how far Cameroon and Co were up Murdoch's censored . Before all the NOTW censored hit the fan.

arran77

Totally off topic Tim, why do all the posties round our way have these trolley things now instead of bikes, is it all health and safety?

tim_wand

Its called a HTC and yer its a health and safety thing.

There used to be bag boxes on every round so the postie on the bike could collect bags from a drop point and then do each loop on the bike. (quicker than trolleys and HTC's in my opinion)

They now go out in Driver and none driver teams, with the none driver returning to the van at set point to pick up bags to use on a little golf trolley type contraption. Or if closer to base with a HTC like above on their own.

I miss the bike, They did a revision (move to this system) at a delivery office near me and ended up scrapping over 100 Pashleys (we weren't allowed any because of conflicts of interest) and nearly 200 sets of spare Schwalbe marathons.

That's efficiency for ya.

They ve still got the bikes in Norfolk and Suffolk though.

arran77

That's progress for you :roll:

tim_wand

Obviously Norfolk and Suffolk don't do progress, think they ve only just changed over from the Pony Express

No bad thing , always on the look out for a Little Post office/ Tea room for sale down there.

rjsterry

The irony os that RM's competitors, such as TNT, are increasing their numbers of bikes.

http://www.theguardian.com/environment/bike-blog/2013/dec/09/royal-mail-post-bikes

kieranb

well I would guess the 2.9% cuts will be applied to the local councils in London, the GLA has a different role to that of a local council. So London will probably also see cuts.

tim_wand

kieranb wrote:

well I would guess the 2.9% cuts will be applied to the local councils in London, the GLA has a different role to that of a local council. So London will probably also see cuts.

Which is?

rick_chasey

London is bigger than a lot of European countries in population terms (10 million at last census) so it requires a different type of governance than your typical local council.

tim_wand

I would have thought the fact that its a Highly populated metropolitan area would mean that it can raise significant amounts through its residents council tax payments.

Where as small rural areas, which are isolated in terms of transport, communications and services don't have such a large pool to draw from and are therefore more susceptible to the impact of cuts from central funding than London.

lanternerouge79

take into account that the majority of london council tax goes towards the Met Police and Fire Brigade not much is left four the actual boroughs. The Met as the largest UK force has many more commitments than your regular county force (Terror,Royal Protection and alike) so trying to compare London with other councils is not like for like.

You also forget that London has some of the most deprived areas of the UK so council tax intake in many boroughs is quite low and then of course the centre is now filled with Russians and Chinese who pay zero council tax.

rick_chasey

lanternerouge79 wrote:

and then of course the centre is now filled with Russians and Chinese who pay zero council tax.

Eh?

You pay council tax based on your property. Regardless of your nationality?

tim_wand

I suppose that depends, If its registered as a second or third property with no residence do you still have to pay?

A mate of mine was doing up a house as a rental, took him all year, but he had to pay council tax on it at an increased rate (something like 40% over the banding) , even though no one lived there and it didn't draw on any local authority amenities.

I accept that running the Met police et al , cost London residents a great deal of money compared to most regional forces, But isn't the Police funding on council tax called a Pre -cept and is set by the Local Police authority and ring fenced from other areas of Council Tax funding. Surely all Police authorities could ring fence their funding from the main council tax bills.

I m not sure what the GLA covers, are there separate local authorities say for Tower Hamlets, Forest Green, Stratford, Hackney e.t.c , the areas I would imagine most of the housing stock is local authority owned and drawing no council tax from.

I thought the GLA was Boris land or owned by the Duke of Westminster.

rick_chasey

I don't know the answer but I know about Hammersmith & Fulham who have managed to offer the same service on less and still have some leeway to keep the council tax low (2nd lowest in the country in fact)

Perhaps the gov't doesn't want to punish local authorities who are pro-active in saving cash AND tax payers money??

Who knows.