Mar 03 2007
Council Tax - reply
The answer is not to transfer all local spending from Council Tax to some national tax. The answer is for government, local and national, to spend less overall.
Of course we should say "No" to extra bands, and to endless revluations, hitting people who improve their homes.
John Redwood has been the Member of Parliament for Wokingham since 1987. First attending Kent College, Canterbury, he graduated from Magdalen College...
So how does government spend less and still provide a good, not reasonable but good, level of care for those who are less able? How do you look after the elderly, the mentally ill, children in care and all of those other groups that a civilised society should put first.
Let me remind you that it was Mrs Thatcher who started the cuts that affect these people the most. What a sour joke ‘care in the community’ has become. No care and no community. mentally ill people just dumped in the streets.
Billy, the reason that there isn’t enough money to go on “good services” is not because we don’t already pay enough tax.
We see all around us obvious examples of money being spent badly - how come after ten years of massive increases in health spending, hospitals running short of money, for example?
I don’t know the figures but a lot of the money we give to the government is used to pay people not to work. Instead the same money should be used to get people into work and then those people would pay tax themselves! There are far too many incentives for people to rely on handouts instead of helping themselves.
‘So how does government spend less and still provide a good, not reasonable but good, level of care for those who are less able? How do you look after the elderly, the mentally ill, children in care and all of those other groups that a civilised society should put first’ (billy)
For a start, elderly people are better off than they ever have been. Yes, there are some cases of fuel poverty, some have lost their pensions (that this government isn’t helping) but most pensioners in today’s society have good pensions and are asset-rich.
Mental health care is also good in this country if you ask me.
I don’t know much about children in care, but it is this government that insist on saving money by forcing special needs kids into mainstream schooling, whilst they are closing special schools. Look at any local authority website if you want to see a few examples of what they are wasting cash on instead.