Thursday, January 03, 2008

Wait Till Your Father Gets Home

Before Christmas, the Sutton Guardian likened Council Leader Sean Brennan to Scrooge, after the LibDems announced their draft Budget which will lead to yet another inflation-busting rise in Council Tax.

Now, the same newspaper reports a stern warning by the father of one of the Deputy Leaders of the Council to think of pensioners before committing them to finding the extra cash from a pension that won't see an increase anywhere near the tax hike. David Dombey, Chairman of the Sutton Seniors Forum reminded his daughter and her colleagues that "Anyone just on state pension is likely to suffer as council tax represents a large percentage of their spending."

Ken Andrew, our parliamentary candidate has met retired residents who have told him that they have had to choose which meals to miss in order to pay their Council Tax bill. I hope that the LibDems still listen to their parents and heed the warning. Amongst the people that will not fret about their bills in April are the two Deputy Leaders who received an extra £6000 allowance each this year and the residents of Conservative Hammersmith and Fulham who can look forward to a second successive reduction in their bill. Meanwhile we wait with baited breath to see if our increase is less than the 4.9% of last year, the second highest increase in London.

H/T for photo before hamfisted changes, Cllr. Phil Taylor

12 comments:

Anonymous said...

Having lived in the borough for twelve years all I can say is: I pay through the nose in council tax. I'm told that our borough is so clean thanks to the Liberal Democrats but frankly the streets are filthy, everything is so dirty.

For all it's green pretentions if it can't get this simply and primary task of a Local Council right, what hope do we have?!

And, Councillor Scully what is this about an additional 6k in the Lib Dems' payment for Council work?

Unknown said...

I'll refer you to my previous entry http://paulscully.blogspot.com/2007/07/nice-work-if-you-can-get-it.html#links
to see the £6k payment that the two deputies received earlier this year.

Unknown said...
This comment has been removed by the author.
Anonymous said...

Raising the council tax appears to be quite the sport of the Lib Dems in Sutton. They're so obsessed with squeezing the borough's hard working residents until the pips squeek so even their parents seem to balk at these punitive taxes.

I'm shocked to hear that these two characters awarded themselves a nice pay award. Pretty low if you ask me.

Please get rid of the Lib Dem Council, Councillor Scully and your team.

Quite frankly I don't think my wallet can take a Lib Dem Council anymore!

Anonymous said...

Mind you - don't forget to include the almost £6k that the deputy leder of the CONSERVATIVES obtained!

What's good for one party is demonstrably good for another.

Anonymous said...

well either way lib dems are spunking our money at an astronomical rate, we need change and a postive message

i agree with sean this council is far to expensive for me! LOL

Anonymous said...

I think it is outrageous that OAPs have to pick council taxes over their meals, how can Sutton council continue raising the tax in good conscience!

If we have to live within our meals jsut to pay this poxy tax so should the council live within its means and only spend on what it can afford.

Anonymous said...

I think that 'Tom Stamford' makes a very good point which is that the Council needs to start living within its means, ie: keeping spending within its budgetary requirements.

If this Council was a business it would have gone bust long ago, and judging by the quality of the service it gives, it would have no customers too!

Hammersmith and Fulham Council seems to be providing excellent services whilst also cutting the burden that resident taxpayers need to shoulder! What a magical combination and something that Sutton is crying out for!

Anonymous said...

The pressure that council tax puts on pensioners is very tough as you say and the state pension has a far lower increase every year yet the council here squeezes more out of us all. my parents are both 74and live in Wallington and they feel the pinch.

What do they spend the money on? How come other councils can spend it wiser like the tory one in your blog Hammersmith and even drive it down??

Sutton council always seems to have plenty of dosh to lob at silly projects like totem poles, super bus stops, more roadhumps, etc but never enough because they ALWAYS raise the loacl council tax.

Anonymous said...

things must be bad for this lib mem council if even their own mums and dads are forced to complain!

these guys obvious don't have an idea in their head about real life & the struggles people like me have to get by with a family. we live in worcester park 1400 quid a year in council tax doesnt help. as one of the comments above says the streets are dirty & gangs clogg up my road, graffiti everywhere & flats are shooting up all over the place changing our neighbourhood, the traffic is also terrible

let me ask what council tax band are ivory towers in? i wont be voting for libdems are the next general elections. they havent got a clue how the other half live

Anonymous said...

lauren in worcester park - I agree with every word you have said, but seriously are the Conservatives the saviours they make out to be? Remember I was a Tory councillor for 6 years, until I saw through their vacuous statements and raw headlining. As a party they have nothing to offer local residents and rate-payers. Council tax might be a little less, yes, but overall you would not notice much difference. In UKIP however we offer bold radical policies. For instance, in London we would actively campaign to abolish the GLA. Yes, that's right. Even though we have candidates for the GLA our aim would be to abolish it. Ridding London of another tier of unwanted government would save YOU and every council-tax payer £300 per annum. Of course you must be well versed in our ultimate goal, which is to leave the EU. You and others on here may well scoff at that and wonder what effect it has on Sutton, but as we spend, or as I prefer to say, waste £1bn per WEEK by being a member then I leave you to work out just what that sort of money would benefit you and your loved ones by. All in all it took me a long time to see through the political fog that is Lib/Lab/Con but at least I can hold my head up and honestly say that YOU and millions of others have no future as long as the current three party system is in place. Continue to protest on blogs like this, but even your grandchildren will not notice any difference in their way of life until their is a radical upheaval in the political scene. That upheavel can only come about with the election of more UKIP candidates at all levels.

Unknown said...

David

1. Hammersmith and Fulham have cut their tax massively for the second year in a row, whilst Conservative Wandsworth have frozen theirs at the lowest level in the UK. UKIP will not run Sutton Council even in Lauren's grandchildren's lifetime so another UKIP councillor will only perpetuate the longest Liberal-run Council in the country.

2. The GLA cannot ban itself. It was set up through primary legislation and so only Government can reverse this. UKIP MEPs have shown that just by having representation on the body that they want to scrap has no effect.

3. I disagree with your assesment that scrapping the GLA will save the taxpayer £300 each. TfL pays for all highways schemes in Sutton, the MPA pays for the 470 police officers and staff in Sutton and LFEPA pays for the Fire Service. This spending would revert back to the local authorities. That is not to say that there would be some saving as Livingstone is running an extremely bloated empire.

4. There is absolutely no way a single local authority, let alone a single councillor can affect the UK's position in the EU. There are plenty of intelligent politicians that are trying without success to rein in the excesses of the project, such as Bill Cash, John Redwood and David Heathcote-Amory.

5. You and your colleagues seem to spend an inordinate amount of time protesting on this blog too. I can't wave a magic wand and get the UK out of Europe. Crikey, it took two months for us to get the LibDems to fly a flag. I really welcome the fact that in recent days, you have taken to enter the spirit of debate. This is far more productive rather than allowing yourself to be castigated as someone carping from the sidelines. I'm afraid, though that debate about Europe whilst interesting won't acheive anything on this blog because it is not me that makes the decisions on that.