Letter: Budget disgrace
The recent Gedling budget consultation by the Conservatives should be exposed as a total sham.
It is some months since the Evening Post revealed Gedling Borough Council had overspent by £800,000. The council had to take about £500,000 from reserves to fill the hole created by the Conservative policies, for the first time in recent memory.
This budget mismanagement is just that, and has nothing to do with the credit crunch. Indeed, Gedling should be benefiting from lower inflation and reductions in utility bills. The bills could and would be even lower if the council pursued greener policies on energy conservation and renewable generation.
Additionally the budget consultation also offers 'significant' service cuts or 'significant' increases in council tax. There is no consideration of dropping expensive consultants or unnecessary waste collections over the cold and wet summer months.
Supposedly the only alternative to these two significant changes is the introduction of car parking charges.
These will be the same car parking charges that were built into the budget by Coun Roland Spencer, back in 2005, two years before the last district elections. The Tories have always known that car parking charges were in the budget. They always planned to introduce them whenever they thought they could sneak them in.
Gedling's Tories are looking to add misery to small local businesses who really are feeling the pinch from the credit crunch, just because they have failed to show any responsibility with taxpayers' money.
IVAN GOLLOP Tennyson Avenue Gedling
4 Comments
by Mr B J Mann, Nottingham
Monday, December 29 2008, 11:34AM
“So you didn't vote for them FW.
Was that because they were too left wing?
Or perhaps not left wing enough?
I think we should be told.
In fact, while you are at it, why not show us your freedom from Knee-jerk reaction. Show us how it should be done.
Labour have been in power, with Gordon Brown holding the purse-strings, and the man behind the scenes, and in total control of domestic policy, and in control of funding for foreign policy initiatives, for eleven years.
Give us eleven things you think they and he got wrong, eleven things you think have happened over which they had no control, and eleven positive things they have achieved, with evidence.
Including that a different administration would have done markedly worse.
Or was that just another of your posts that show how ridiculous politics is when based on ideological knee-jerkreactions?”
by Disillusioned, UK
Friday, December 26 2008, 8:56PM
“I don`t see any other current Governments FW, that we can blame.Anyway, at least I am adding to the original letter and not just slagging everyone else off.”
by FW, Nottingham
Friday, December 26 2008, 8:27PM
“"yawn, yawn" is, indeed, the phrase when it comes to tediously-predictable NEP readership knee-jerk Labour bashing. Of course they have got some things wrong, and some things have happened over which they had no control, but to reflexively blame every bad thing on the current government, ignore everything positive, and imply with zero evidence that a different administration would have done markedly better just shows how ridiculous politics is when based on ideological knee-jerk rather than actually engaging some degree of thought process.
Incidentally, before yet more predictable response arises, I didn't vote for them either. I just have sufficient sense to know that there is unlikely to be any useful truth in an argument along the lines of "it's all their fault..."”
by Disillusioned, UK
Friday, December 26 2008, 8:00PM
“I suppose we have to applaud Mr Gollop for at least having a go at the Torys. No one in the Torys has either the gumption or the b***s to have a go at Labour, despite the latters appaling Government`s record over the last 11 yrs in everything that matters,i.e uncontrolled mass immigration, soaring gangland warfare, drug dealing, murder and violent crime, buiding of new homes that no one can afford, yawn yawn, the list is endless.”