Apr 25 2007
As the din of election battle grows a little louder - bins and taxes
Yesterday in the Commons an Opposition debate on paying for local services gave the parties a chance to set out their stalls for May 3rd.
The battle is over money more than anything else. People are fed up with paying so much for government as a whole and receiving so little. The Lib Dems offer local Income Tax, without always explaining that can only be introduced if Parliament voted for it, and both main parties are against it. Suggesting it is around the corner, and it will lower people’s bills, is just plain wrong.
Labour has looked at further stealthy increases in the Council Tax, been rumbled and has had to rule out revaluations and other obvious tricks this Parliament, to add to the 92% rise on Council Tax since 1997.
There is then the battle of the bins. Many people feel rubbish collection is the only major service they receive for all their tax, so they are understandably
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John Redwood has been the Member of Parliament for Wokingham since 1987. First attending Kent College, Canterbury, he graduated from Magdalen College...
Quite right-we are sick of paying so much for so little at local and national level. However, there is tremendous scepticism about all politicians and their parties. Is the Conservative Party still committed to a smaller state and lower taxes and do you also pledge to retain the weekly bin collection? It is one thing to want to be rid of Labour but you need to convince the voters that life would be better under the Conservatives. In my judgement you still have much to do.
John Redwood:
What utter hypocrisy.
i am a councillor who sits on a council that introduced alternative weekly collections of rubbish. If we had to cllect both bins each week the cost to council tax payers would have been astronomical as it would have effectively meant a doubling in the amount spent on bin collections as recycling has to go in a different lorry from normal waste.
To say that councillor need to get control of taxes and bins is to miss the point. If you want a weekly collection, you need to pay for it through taxes.