George Osborne’s policy commitment to freeze Council Tax for two years is welcome. It’s a start, in the very least, to reducing Council Tax for Britain’s families. Yet in the Evening Standard yesterday, a chain-gang of councils marched out to reject any Council Tax freeze, claiming it would lead to “misery” for taxpayers.
How on earth would cutting publicity budgets and consultants lead to misery? I’ll tell you what’s miserable – seeing pensioners dragged through the courts because they can’t pay your soaring levels of Council Tax when councillors can vote time and again to increase their allowances.
But before even a general election, which could be years away, the following councils have decreed and doomed their residents to even higher Council Tax:
Islington (Lib Dem)
Kingston (Lib Dem)
Richmond (Lib Dem)
Southwark (Lib Dem)
Sutton (Lib Dem)
Brent (Lib Dem/ Tory)
Camden (Lib Dem/Tory)
Waltham Forest (Labour/Lib Dem)
Barking and Dagenham (Labour)
Hackney (Labour)
Haringey (Labour)
Greenwich (Labour)
Lambeth (Labour)
Lewisham (Labour)
Newham (Labour)
Tower Hamlets (Labour)
It’s emblematic of the culture in local government that these Councils continue to defend the indefensible, to lump you with ever increasing Council Tax. So important are consultants (oddly enough former council employees or former councillors) and PR consultants that their absence will lead to taxpayer misery. Yeah, right.
If you have the misfortune to reside under the authority of the apparatchiks governing the councils above, I’ve hyperlinked the email addresses for the leaders or elected mayors of the councils so you can give them a good barracking and ask them – politely in the TPA fashion – why they want to take more of your money.
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