I took one look at the explanatory notes to Local Government Finance Bill currently traversing the House and thought ‘oh dear, not one for me’…its complexities are clearly designed for the numerous experts in the House who have a grasp of the inner workings of local authority finance. But yesterday, as it nears the final report stages, those two normally calm, good-natured and experienced opponents, Baroness Hanham the Minister and Lord McKenzie of Luton for the Opposition both got quite heated. In spite of the Government having announced the day before that an extra £100 million had been allocated to transitional relief for Councils, the Opposition did not seem grateful.
As I listened to the debates about various amendments I realised that underlying the tension was a fundamental difference of ideology between the parties about who should pay council tax. Essentially the Government believes that everyone should pay something however small, should be invested in what the Council does, be able to influence local spending and services. The Opposition take a more pragmatic approach to those who have never paid council tax and are unlikely to willingly pay even a little if they have never done so before. There was a harking back to fears of the 1984 Poll Tax disaster; Lord Jenkin of Roding confessed to how bad an idea it had proved to be politically (as Patrick Jenkin he was Environment Secretary responsible for implementing it). One aim of the Bill is to localise council tax benefit and give councils stronger incentives to support local firms, cut fraud, promote local enterprise and get people back into work. The opposition claims that poor people living in areas with cash-strapped councils would be disproportionately hit but there were no solid figures to support that assertion even though one suspected it was true. Baroness Hanham said England’s council tax benefit bill had soared from £2bn in 1997-98, to £4.3bn in 2011-12. “In 2010-11 we were spending more on welfare than on education, health and defence combined,” she said.
But the sheer complexity of the amendments made it quite difficult to follow. I voted with the Government on the first one because I felt there was more posturing than substance to the Opposition amendment but I would have voted with the next two amendments with the Lib Dems, Crossbenchers and Opposition if I hadn’t been committed to another event outside parliament. Can I admit how frustrating the parliamentary timetable is? We had a statement mid afternoon on Extradition, a simple repeat of the Home Secretary’s statement to the Commons in the wake of the decision about Gary McKinnon. So debate on the bill was stopped for an hour, meaning that all the votes in the Bill were delayed until later in the evening. I was already committed to an event organized by people who I am not going to let down. This happens so often and its simply because there is no culture in parliament of having a reliable time-table. Everyone takes it for granted that business will be changed at will whether or not the matter is urgent. And most peers don’t complain; it’s just another working practice devised for those with nothing else to do but spend all afternoon and evening in the House. Sorry, only one week back and I’m complaining already!
who should pay council tax.
People should pay in proportion to what they use whether in their cars or their homes.
thus the fairest way of paying council tax is by charging ever higher fees for parking in town parking space. The splendid charges for
Swanage Dorset of £6 a time for a car park space is a proper reflection of the use that people are making of local facilities, whether residents or “grockles”, visitors to the county.
Car parking fees are a big money spinner and it is entirely proper that they should pay handsomely for going past my home and the noise pollution and loss of visual amenity of the vicinity.
Baroness, is it a surprise that with millions of people newly unemployed and a massive increase in population of almost 4 million, as a result of migration, that the amount benefits cost the public purse would increase, dramatically?
You cannot imagine that this kind of instability and disorder, along with massive austerity cuts would have left the welfare bill the same as it was, could you?
If so, that is truly a naive stance to have.
Of course these cuts will cause devastation. Not to mention the end of many businesses as little excess money will be available for them to survive. Look at the high street. It is almost extinct. Pound shops are doing well. Does this not compute at all.
People who have no funds cannot spend. Those who have money but are being squeezed will not spend either, because they are fearful they will not meet the necessities. Gas, electric, food, etc., all skyrocketing, are essentials, so they hang onto their pennies out of reliability and obligation to their family needs.
This mad idea that shutting down the money supply to the poorest will spur those at the top to spend more is too absurd to chew on. If the well off have more to spend they do it on travel. Out of the country not here. And, conversely, the more austerity we have, the less tourism we will see, as there is no joy in a downbeat environment in which to take a break.
Clearly the HoL IS a political chamber. As for timetables it was the presence of a timetable that in part defeated the HoL reform bill in the Commons.
On Gary McKinnon: he was caught by NASA whilst viewing a large photo containing UFO images on a slow dial-up modem. He was inspired to hack by a handbook by Hugo Cornwall, who is now Peter Sommer at the London School of Economics. Apparently, the first edition was banned by the UK government and they had to make an edited reprint with material taken out. Gary has no formal Microsoft Network Qualifications but earned a living as a contract systems administrator.
What is of concern is evidence of his activities on US servers. He was able to access networks using ‘remote desktop services’ (a virtual monitor) because null or empty Administrator passwords were in use both by NASA and the Pentagon; they shared information across networks.
One assumes he used the word ‘Administrator’ as the username to gain access. Its likely that they were using NT3 or NT4 servers because the default logon administrator name was, as it is now ‘Administrator’. On these servers this default password could be changed but was rarely done. On workstations there was no way to change the default admin username? The Administrator account was a skeleton key that granted access to everything everywhere on poorly installed networks.
Evidence for write/ delete events would come from the audit trails on servers or workstations however the username would be ‘Administrator’ so whilst he has never denied accessing networks the council for the prosecution would have to prove that that the damage incurred was actually done by him. This would be impossible to do. Any UK court would have to request copies of audit trail logs from the US. These logs would be files that could be invisibly amended using hexadecimal file editors?
What is astonishing is that he says he saw foreign IP addresses from various nations all having a feeding frenzy at the expense of the Pentagon’s lamentable network security.
Ref: Gary McKinnon: Interview transcript. June 2006
http://projectcamelot.org/lang/en/gary_mckinnon_interview_transcript_en.html
If better (more sustainworthy) financial governance, budgeting and management is a “bad idea” for Politics,
then Politics is a Bad-Idea,
not only for participatory democratic governance
but for Earth-Lifesupports-Survival-&-Thrival governance too.
So how can you make any decision when you don’t have a set of accounts to work out what is affordable or not.
You are either ignorant or a fraudster.
If you know about the debts and choose to ignore them, then you are a fraudster. Section 2 of the 2006 fraud act applies. You can’t claim ignorance when you get the vote on that bill.
Or you are ignorant, because you haven’t realized the extent of the debt.
However, perhaps you fall into the Maude view of the world.
Assange is a saint for telling people what’s going on.
Blagger tells people about the debt, and I fall into the nasty category.
So Maude, why is that the debts should be hidden? Are you that dependent on the state?
@Blagger:
Your ignorance in this last post of yours astounds me. I had held you as one of the smarter crowd.
Don’t you realise, that we are all, one way or another, dependent on the state? And the state is simply administrators of our cash. And, yes, I agree they have made many fraudulent claimes and hypocritic decisions with regards to what and whom they send our tax payers money. As well as the game of filling their own coffers as fast as they can whilst keeping themselves from faces fraud charges. What the rich genetleman farmers coin in from the EU you take your bret away. And they keep that secret, no digging will put that out in the open. Because the majority of the big beneficiaries are Lords of the Realm.
However, if your claim is, anyone who understands the position of those in society with the least, must therefore be a claimant of some kind of benefit, you would have to include yourself in that post haste.
Unlike you, I am able to follow the profligacy of an administration who puts other nations before the people who vote for them and keep them positioned. although we see Lord Solely is well looked after by his particular interest group. On the other hand, I can follow the gist of families who are not able to work hard enough to make a living wage, as those same pay levels have been held down to such an extent, the ‘state’ has to spend ‘our tax’ supporting those paid Dickensian wages to the tune of billions. And I have no doubt you are one of the benefactors of that little game. An employer who squeezes blood out of a stone, and expects us all to pay a living wage to them so they donn’t starve, because you don’t want to fulfil your duty to the society you live in. And there you are pretending you are not reliant on state hand outs, when you are the piglet who snorts in the trough the deepest.
You and your kind fiddle the tax payer relentlessly. And like, Starbucks, Google and the rest, claim no profit whilst you buy two or three mansions, stash cash off shore and soak up the vino at £5,000 per bottle on tax payer largesse.
Give me a break, Blagger, you are as big a fraudster as those you accuse. If I were to spill the beans about just how the businessmen fiddle tax and vat duty the heads would spin. So don’t play the dependent on welfare game with me. Accountants are mine as the old saying goes.
Don’t you realise, that we are all, one way or another, dependent on the state
==========
No, we are victims of the state. as the rest of your paragraph points out. The cronyism, from Green subsidies, to farming subsidies, to fiddling of expenses, to 2,700 quid a day it costs to run a Peer, all comes out of our pockets.
We are the victims.
========
However, if your claim is, anyone who understands the position of those in society with the least, must therefore be a claimant of some kind of benefit, you would have to include yourself in that post haste.
=======
Far from it. Either your a net claimant, or your a net payer. One gets money from other people, the others people pay the price.
Now that’s either now, or its across time. ie. Paying for all those things, dumping it on future generations. Let the children pay, we want to party.
So, yep, they are doing what you say. They are spending the money on junkets and foreign aid. That’s all coming at the expense of those people who have paid over lots of money for their pension. [READ WHAT I’VE WRITTEN, NOT WHAT YOU THINK I’VE WRITTEN, BECAUSE I AGREE WITH YOU]
The money has gone else where.
You and your kind fiddle the tax payer relentlessly. And like, Starbucks, Google and the rest, claim no profit whilst you buy two or three mansions, stash cash off shore and soak up the vino at £5,000 per bottle on tax payer largesse
Now you are trying the Libel route to making a point. I’ve no mansion.
You still fail to cotton on as to the point.
The state has taken people’s pension money and spent it. It’s all gone. Even the current state pension is only 20% of the value that those contributors would have had if they had invested their money.
And the cause? It’s fraudulent accounting.
Now I agree entirely with the effects you point out. However, the difference is I know why those effects are happening. The state is bankrupt. You don’t want to acknowledge this.
It’s a common theme. You would rather blame someone other than the state for the mess, or blame the motivations of politicians.
Hence the question for you.
How can you distinguish between a state that won’t pay (the nasty Tory scenario), and the state that can’t pay? (The bankrupt Greek scenario)
Over to you.
Here we go again, blagger. I blame everybody, the state, or, government in particular, as they are led by the nose in these situations, whilst pretending knowledge and vision for our future. Look at the Adair Turner fiasco. And they are ready to consider this ‘Lord’ as governor for the bank of England. Talk about making a laughing stock of us all. It is unconscienable.
Yes, you and I fundamentally agree on quie a bit. But, the big gap is in the realisation of the so called money and how it is spent. Government has taken all our money and spent it, is your mantra. Therefore, they are to blame. And, yes, that is in part the truth.
I, on the other hand, comprehend the fact they have had no money to spend on anything and have not had for a very long time. The fraud is the knoweldge of and the pursuit of computer money, or, Fiat. There is no money in real terms. Hasn’t been for a long time. So the money you constantly tizzy over, doesn’t exist.
Therefore, if they want to create a fake austerity in order to reduce funds to the poor, that is criminality. And why it is criminal is, because if you are using the printing of money to keep a nation going, then printing more to maintain those on the bottom is niether here nor there. It is simply a choice of who is to get pretend money, the rich or the poor. They choose to constantly favour the rich whilst starving the poor. That is morally unacceptable in a civlised society. Maharajas R us is not the way to go in a modern society. If you want that, take a slow boat to India. They are really coining it in with slave and child labour, all going toward making the unbelievably rich fatter than hogs.
That is not a society that can be considered a great place to be. Why would you want to bring that to our citizens? And I know you will say you don’t but what you write implies it is.
Get back to the money pretence and peruse it and its outcome. That will relieve you of the figures game you are steeped in. And which leaves you in financial confusion.
Turner is one of the main villains.
His report into the pensions system did the job it was intended to do. Whitewash what is going on. At no point did he put a number to what the state owes people. How can you run a pensions system without quantifying your liabilities?
At least we know agree that the state has taken the money, and there is none. However it would still be useful if you can quantify the extent of the black hole.
My views on this are partly political. If people knew they wouldn’t pay in. That means the mess is curtailed now, rather than later. The longer it is delayed, the larger the mess. Think about the Greek scenario in the UK. Would people be as restrained as the Greeks? I doubt it. We either end up with fascism, or communism. Neither is pleasant.
I don’t share your view on fiat, and here is why.
Lets say Greece is on the Gold Standard. How does that save the Greek government? It does’t. It can’t pay out on its debts. Same as it can’t pay out on its debts now.
It’s not fiat money that is the fault, because it’s clearly not a solution to the Greek problem, that is a debt problem, and the fraud in covering it up.
They would be in the s**t with or without fiat. Hence its not fiat, its debt.
nd why it is criminal is, because if you are using the printing of money to keep a nation going, then printing more to maintain those on the bottom is niether here nor there. It is simply a choice of who is to get pretend money, the rich or the poor. They choose to constantly favour the rich whilst starving the poor.
Here your argument falls down in several ways.
1. The assumption that QE (printing) has gone to the rich. It hasn’t. It’s gone via the banks to the government. Hence of the 375 bn of QE, 345 billion is ‘invested’ by the BoE in Gilts. The other 30 bn (more actually) was on Gordon Brown’s socialist idea of nationalising the banks. [They should have been sent to the wall)
So where has that 345 billion gone to? It’s gone to the poor. It’s been spent. All the rich have had is increases in their taxes. Up from 40%.
That is not a society that can be considered a great place to be.
Exactly. That’s my conclusion. However the reason isn’t the rich, or the banks, or the Jews, or any other scapegoat that Westminster wants to push. It’s not the federal reserve in the US, or the EU.
It’s Politicians running a fraud. They have no money to back up their liabilities.
End result, they will screw people in several ways.
1. Those on handouts – they will be cut.
2. Those earning money – they will be taxed more
3. Future generations get the bills
4. Services will be cut.
Yep, its s**t. It’s politicians and the state.
Just to give you one number.
If a median worker had put their NI into the FTSE, they would have had 550,000 pounds at retirement. Instead they get a state pension costing 120-130,000. Hmmm 420,000 pounds to pay for a bit of JSA and a bit of disability?
I know that almost everyone given the choice would opt for the fund. However, they can’t do that, because its a fraud, its Ponzi. You need more mugs.
I’m not confused. I’m enlightened. You need to look into the basic mathematics, or you will be condemned to being a victim.
Right now Baroness, unless you’re unemployed or disabled, you have nothing to complain about. You’re allowed to complain when you face a winter with not much to eat and fear of putting your heating on with more horror stories about council tax and bedroom tax but really…. you don’t know what hardship is.
Apart from being one of the major causes of hardship.
e.g. Paying 20p in the pound on the state pension. 400% charges on your pension anyone? Roll up for the government scheme run by Peers and MPs.
Ever ask why they have their own pension fund and aren’t members of the civil service pension system? It’s because there are no assets in that scheme, and they are going to default on it. What do MPs do when there is a short fall in theirs? Vote themselves more of your cash.
It’s a fraud. Take money as ‘insurance’ against bad times. Then default when you have to pay out.
The cause? Keep a set of fraudulent books in order to keep the Ponzi running.
@Sharon:
For a bit of information you may not have, ATOS, is an American based company hired by our UK government, at huge expense to the tax payers, to traumatise our people and cause chaos to the disabled. Add to that, the killing projections government have sent out to GP’s and doctors in general and realise this is what being a protecctorate of the USA means.
Government has asked our GP’s to project at least one in a hundred deaths per year and by doing so, arrange to set them up for the witdrawal of water and food in order that they will no longer exist.
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2161869/Top-doctors-chilling-claim-The-NHS-kills-130-000-elderly-patients-year.html
ATOS and where it is coming from.
http://muggedbyukba.blogspot.co.uk/2012/07/american-company-atos-tell-dying.html
The people of government who made this selection should be sued by the people they are abusing under the Human Rights Act. Which, of course, they now want rid of. Wonder why that is?
1. 1 million disabled has increase to 2.5 million for political reasons. Too embarassed to have that number ‘unemployed’.
The rest of society pays the cost in multiple ways.
a) DLA
b) Benefits
c) Pension costs
d) Health costs
e) Lack of tax revenues.
2. Why the concern over 100 deaths? The NHS kills 20-80,000 a year.
3) Where is the human rights abuse? In general, if you take other people’s money without their consent, do you think those taken should have a human rights defence?
As for cost, if the DWP did it, costs would rocket.
You’re assuming ATOS means costs, and no ATOS means no costs.
Obviously you, Blagger, have shares in ATOS. Or are somehow connected to them and their frankestein crew. Nice little earner that. In with the Republican carpet baggers as well are you?
And your figures are way off. You make them up as you go along.
Besides that. We the tax payer hand over our money not for the benefit of you and your American friends, we hand it over to fulfil the contract we signed up to. This money being pilferred by successive governments is our welfare fund.
What governments are doing with it is fraudulant and it is also against the decency of any modern civilised society. Time for the people to say no more and mean it.
I have no shares in ATOS.
So here are the figures.
1 million disabled before Thatcher started the “Lets hide the unemployed” scam. Carried on in spades by NuLabour.
2.5 million now.
So where are your numbers? Not a single one. None. Not surprising.
After all, if the numbers are there, you can’t argue against them.
So you will
1. Make personal attacks
2. Refuse to publish any numbers.
e.g. 7,000 bn in debt, because they spent everyone’s pension savings on things like hiding the unemployed in with the disabled.
13 times geared. Worse than RBS.
So they have no choice. They will screw over the hidden unemployed. They will screw over the disabled. At some point they will come for you and me. [Assuming they haven’t come for you already]
After all Dennis McShane and his ilk need over 100,000 grand in rent for a garage. All perfectly legal, since they made the rules.
But that’s Labour for you. Fast and loose with other people’s money. Same for the Tories. Even more so for the Lib Dems. Ditto the Peers. Spot the trend? Take other people’s money. Don’t give a s**t about the effect so long as you trouser lots of cash.
Presumably it is easier for a Brit to be extradited since he speaks the English required to understand what the password is,
and anything on the ‘secure’ websites.
We have not heard any more of the man who has been recently extradited.
@GH:
It wasn’t one man who was extradited to the US it was five, including Abu Hamza. And for the record, I think his extradition was a miscarriage of justice as well. On the grounds of the US being as unfit as Jordan on the torture stakes.
The other four guys you hear little of because their charges are debateable.
We have heard more of Abu Hamza and it is not happy reading. The man, who is so far still without a conviction, has had his prothesis removed which leaves him unable to function. However, we here the US will make him a rubber pair. The claim is health and safety. Funny that, as they are not signed up to the Human Rights act.
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-us-canada-19889820
And here we see the accusations toward these men are opaque.
http://www.libdemvoice.org/opinion-abu-hamza-isnt-gary-mckinnon-but-we-should-still-be-concerned-about-his-extradition-30797.html
Don’t you realise, that we are all, one way or another, dependent on the state?(Elwes)
Non dependence at any time on either Health services or Schooling provides a measure of independence at which most socialists would be horrified.
If you were a non car driver, ie not using the roads, or the fossil fuels, you might be a perfectly independent person, except for the consumption of money.
The non responsibility for war as a British subject in 2003 was an interesting definer of
non dependence in a democratic sense, and many Lib Dems took the cake for that.
No man is an island! All mankind is a political creature in the modern world without exception. Mosquitoes too.
Maude is over stepping the mark, and getting something in a twist if not her trousers. Senex’s comment was about computer hacker extradition.
£2bn in 1997-98, to £4.3bn in 2011-12. “In 2010-11 we were spending more on welfare than on education, health and defence combined,” she said.
That is £4,300,000,000.
If the payments are based on a minimum wage beneath which the recipients are known to earn,it is certainly a guide to poverty, but only if they drink, smoke, gamble on the lottery go the the pub for entertainment, the betting shop for the horses, and the street corner drug dealer for their smokes.
Otherwise they may not be particularly poor especially if they enjoy their allotment, don’t have a TV (cos the licence is so expensive), forego foreign holidays, are abstemious, and do not buy prepared food.
Poverty and riches are attitudes of mind, as the noble baroness knows all too well.
St Anthony of the Desert informed us all.
My knickers are nothing to do with you GH. So keep your hands and eyes off them.
I knew exactly what Senex was referring to and chose to mention the others who were used as pawns in the game of ‘let the yanks rule us, as they know how to run the law and prisons, at a healthy price of course. That way we will be able to convince the voter that their US prison running companies and their health assessement firms are worth all the money our taxes are being worked off to pay for it.
Then the joke is thrown in that if we let them run the prisons they will get a bonus if they make sure the criminal doesn’t return. Are they being serious. Run down their business will they? Oh, what a clever spin.
What we need is a few of the American law enforcers to interview and take over in the House of Commons and the Lords over the expenses scandals. They may really save us a few bob there. Only, I doubt it, as they are the back slapping brigade who love the idea of a Lordship sitting on their knee Savile style.
You have my so called remarks totally out of tune with my posts. Make an effort to keep up, Gareth.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Q7o4VNHQ594
As a little refresher.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=92vb-Zn3qZ4
Remember this. It is whatwe are told will be good for us.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jWmRwDdRBNA
1 million disabled has increase to 2.5 million for political reasons. Too embarassed to have that number ‘unemployed’(Blagger).
That was about 25 years ago!
It also controls
people far more effectively, since Doctors have considerable powers of sectioning in the Mental health acts.
Ha! Ha! Maude! My problem is that I am not a collector of plaster casts of any other female anatomical shape, or item.
That was about 25 years ago!
==========
Yep. So 1.5 million * 25 years * 13K a year
Hmmm, its a lot of money.
Baroness Murphy,
It is good to see you again in print here. However, I have noticed you have a strong tendency to call attention to the times when people do not appreciate that their own situation is not nearly as bad as that of a neighbouring or comparable group.
I hope to turn the tables here and have you think of Americans who watch the Congress live on extensions, fail to meet fiscal deadlines, agree to mechanical substitutes for deliberation, not make time for any cross- party social interaction and I could keep going. Contrary to what some British wag or some thousand may think this is not how it has always been and we are not a country with no legislative culture. Somehow management has become disastrous across our government, legislature, executive and other elements of the Federal Institutions. When I see many of the things in this blog being complained about It reminds me of earlier and better days. I am not a very old man and I recall such distinct differences.
I wonder if the lack of time discipline in small matters serves as a reminder in your body that the people actually around matter to everyone. I appreciate your right and duty to complain. Yet, I wonder what results would come from a more arbitrary discipline…
Baroness Murphy,
It is good to see you again in print here.(Frank)
It is good to have a psychiatrist to turn to, if not a pharmacist. Since this has been a humorous if not witty post thread, I confide in you that I live in an area with the most vulgar village names imaginable. Piddle this and Piddle that in Dorset, as well as Shitterton and Tincleton. It reads like an Enid Blyton best seller.
However am I going mad or is it normal for my last three physicians in the area ( and I know they won’t mind my mentioning bona fide names) to have the following names:
Boil, Pain and now Coffin?
It would not be so bad except for the saying
“The graveyards are full of the patients of young doctors”.
Coffin is about 26 and wants a heart to heart with me, at which I had to warn him that I am a retired director of the Coop Manchester which is the largest undertaker in the UK.
He’ll have no luck with me!!!
Macabre.
Gareth Howell,
I assume no comment from me is required or expected here. I am happy to float parenthetically above your comment…