andrewducker (![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
andrewducker) wrote2024-05-23 10:31 am
andrewducker) wrote2024-05-23 10:31 am
Who to blame for your local council not having any money
I am all in favour of robust discussions of government spending (at all levels of government, from councils to Westminster), but there's a thing I've noticed recently which has been particularly annoying - using it for party-political* attacks when the issue isn't within the control of the people being attacked.
So you'll see people complaining about the parties currently running Edinburgh council because of the way they're dealing with childcare subsidies**, but largely ignoring the fact that the council has constantly reducing budgets because the funding that they get from the Scottish Government is constantly being reduced.
And then I see regular sniping from local politicians aimed at the Scottish Government about there not being enough funding which never acknowledges that the Scottish budget has also dropped significantly, with more reductions planned.
The people who actually have had control over overall budgets, who have decided whether there's enough money to invest in growing Britain, including Scotland, and thus including local government, are the Conservatives, who have spent the last 15 years slashing both taxes and spending. If the people of Edinburgh want to blame someone for their local amenities closing then it's the Conservatives who are to blame***.
This does, of course, mean that once Labour are in, if they can get the economy running better (and don't stick to the Conservative's terrible tax/spend limits), that things should get better for everyone. Fingers crossed, eh?
*"Politics" is just how we agree to run things. I expect many many things to be political. Party-politics, where politicians spend their time attacking other parties *in ways that don't actually make sense*, annoys the hell out of me.
**The current system really doesn't work for situations where significant numbers of people are bringing their children across a council boundary for childcare.
***Which isn't to say that there can't be significant differences of opinion over *where* the money should be spent. But right now, any local politician complaining about a lack of money for something should be making it clear what they'd cut to make it available.
So you'll see people complaining about the parties currently running Edinburgh council because of the way they're dealing with childcare subsidies**, but largely ignoring the fact that the council has constantly reducing budgets because the funding that they get from the Scottish Government is constantly being reduced.
And then I see regular sniping from local politicians aimed at the Scottish Government about there not being enough funding which never acknowledges that the Scottish budget has also dropped significantly, with more reductions planned.
The people who actually have had control over overall budgets, who have decided whether there's enough money to invest in growing Britain, including Scotland, and thus including local government, are the Conservatives, who have spent the last 15 years slashing both taxes and spending. If the people of Edinburgh want to blame someone for their local amenities closing then it's the Conservatives who are to blame***.
This does, of course, mean that once Labour are in, if they can get the economy running better (and don't stick to the Conservative's terrible tax/spend limits), that things should get better for everyone. Fingers crossed, eh?
*"Politics" is just how we agree to run things. I expect many many things to be political. Party-politics, where politicians spend their time attacking other parties *in ways that don't actually make sense*, annoys the hell out of me.
**The current system really doesn't work for situations where significant numbers of people are bringing their children across a council boundary for childcare.
***Which isn't to say that there can't be significant differences of opinion over *where* the money should be spent. But right now, any local politician complaining about a lack of money for something should be making it clear what they'd cut to make it available.
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Looking at the shit list Labour has of problems that need addressing, I'm not optimistic we'll see much change that quickly. But then I'm a cynic.
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https://inews.co.uk/news/politics/labour-manifesto-match-tories-tax-and-spending-2925721
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In US federal politics, Republicans who want to cut things promise to make compensatory money available by cutting "waste, fraud, and abuse," usually phrased in that exact way. But they never say how they're going to identify it, or how to cut it if they do. (If it were so easily dealt with, it would have been long ago.)
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