Shades of Grey

Three pertinent letters this week.

The first is from an observer at the March Town Council meeting. The title was the width of the Postbag.


I don’t know who he is but I am pleased that my thoughts on what observers might have thought of us are on the mark as far as he is concerned.

The second is from Amy Teale, leader of the Labour Group.


To save you looking it up, here are two definitions of petulant

pet·u·lant (p?ch’?-l?nt) pronunciation
adj.

1. Unreasonably irritable or ill-tempered; peevish.
2. Contemptuous in speech or behavior.

[Latin petul?ns, petulant-, insolent, from petere, to assail.]
petulance pet’u·lance or pet’u·lan·cy n.
petulantly pet’u·lant·ly adv.

I have to say that Amy’s letter betrays a huge level of ignorance of debating matters. When proposing an amendment,it is not permitted to actually discuss the motion first as the amendment will be refused by the Chairman in those circumstances. (You can’t speak for or against a motion and then subsequently amend it- it would give you two bites of the cherry.) My proposition was democratically rejected but there was no effort to explore it first. At that point, the amendment having been lost, I was then entitled to speak on the original motion and would have done so had I not lost the opportunity to do so shortly afterwards. (I was happy to let a couple of others speak first (keeping your powder dry!) and that was my downfall
Her points about Derek Bradley being wrong in blaming just the Labour party have merit, but she spoils it with a personal attack about having “lost the plot”.

having the opportunity to raise concerns in the proper place (the Chamber) is exactly the point I am making and has obviously sailed straight over her head.

her suggesting that I would rather remain silent in the Chamber and then go to the press is at best disingenious- did she not hear me stress that I wished to speak at the meeting?

As for blatant electioneering, it seems somewhat of a ridiculous comment seeing as how I’m not standing again! I have no idea what Derek Bradley’s intentions are though.

Amy, I’m waving goodbye to you from the window of the Cluetrain that you missed…

Finally, one fromDerek Bradley.

I’m a bit puzzled by this and wonder if he has got confused.One Motion on whether to give funding to a charity was indeed deferred after I picked several holes in the proposal. However, the Morley Together Motion was accepted by a majority- but at breakneck speed and with abuse of procedure-it must be that he blinked and missed it!

You push the buttons and the contraption transfers water from the Canal to the tank. It then drains back to the Canal!

David already has two eggs, one from each of us.

One of his Grandmas sent him a Fiver for a nice egg. After wanting to buy a £9 one (and being rebuffed by my refusing him an advance on next week’s pocket money) he succombed to five £1 ones from the asda.

I’m trying to persuade him to donate some to our eggs for the needy collection at work, but he remains unswayed at the moment.

Good for him!

We’ll ration him to one or two a week, so that lot should last through to May day.

Our Council tax for 2007/8 has arrived and is a whopping £1,200.05. How is that money justified?

Well, let us delve more deeply into the numbers. First of all, our house is classed as a Band D, which is sort of ordinary. The bands are based on how much the house was worth in 1991, fifteen years ago. Now putting aside how realistic or fair it is to base the value of your house on what you contribute to local taxes (rather than what local services you consume) it does give a profile of people paying different amounts. For Leeds, the ratio is roughly as follows:

A 40.25%
B 20.65%
C 19.1%
D 9.2%
E 5.8%
F 2.8%
G 2.0%
H 0.2%

Now these households pay a ratio of the Band D amount in ninths, as follows:

A - 6/9
B - 7/9
C - 8/9
E - 11/9
F - 13/9
G - 15/9
H - 18/9

There is also a hidden bottom band which used to be called band W but is now referred to as Band A (5/9) where a disabilities discount is granted.

So for a £1,200 bill, the Band A’s pay £800 and the Band H’s pay £2,400. (Of course there are discounts and benefits to ease the bill for the needy).

So now you know.

The Leeds City Council amount is £1,182.20 and on top of that we pay £17.85 to Morley Town council. (Other Bands follow the ninths formula.)

The Leeds sum includes two specific precepts- for policing (£118.02) and Fire & Rescue (£48.02) so Leeds get to keep £1,016.16.

Expressing it weekly, we pay as follows:

Leeds £19.54
Police £2.27
Fire £0.92
MTC £0.34
=============
TOTAL £23.07

It doesn’t sound too much when expressed that way. However, it is grossly misleading as local taxes only make up a small amount of Local Council revenue- most of it comes from Central Government through a series of complex, arcane and readily manipulative (by the government) formulae. This is why larger than inflation increases in local tax don’t have the same beneficial effect in Council budgets- the pips are getting squeezed by the men from the Ministry.

This is summarised by Leeds as follows:

Where does the money come from?
Service Specific Government Grants 46%
Fees and charges 14%
Council Tax 13%
Business Rates 13%
Rents 9%
General Government Grant 2%
Other 3%

Where does the money go?
Employees 49%
Supplies and transport 30%
Payment of benefits etc 12%
Paying debt and interest 5%
Premises 4%

These are the actual services:

Let us put this into big numbers context. What is the overall budget of the Council?

£1,848,400,000 (to the nearest hundred thousand pounds).

That is a Gosh number. Nearly TWO BILLION POUNDS, nearly half of which goes on salaries for the 35,000 employees. It makes you think…

The election day for Morley Town/Parish Council (as well as two of the City Council Morley ward seats) is to be Thursday May 3rd, 7am to 10pm. The election will officially be published on March 27th (Tuesday) and prospective candidates then have from Wednesday 28th to Noon on Wednesday 4th April to get their papers in and accepted by the Electoral Services Team.

The candidates will be published on April 5th and then the race is on.

The votes will be counted from 10am on Friday morning, probably in Morley Town Hall.

More details about the forms to fill in and the process can be found on Leeds City Council Website.