WALTER CRONXITE reports on a piece of political posturing which will do little to improve the standard of social care and other services provided by local councils
For Tony Newman and his Labour councillors who have been fretting over how they present their budget for the 12 months through until the next local elections, the news yesterday must have been like seeing the cavalry riding over the horizon to the rescue: true-blue Tory-run Surrey County Council wants to increase its Council Tax by 15per cent.
Not since Derek Hatton and Liverpool council roundly rejected the government’s financial settlement for local authorities have the little guys in Town Halls and County Halls around the country answered back to Westminster with such force of argument. Interviewed across broadcast media yesterday, David Hodge, the Conservative leader of Surrey County Council, made it clear that his local authority simply can no longer manage with the inadequate funding they have been given by central government under the austerity measures of Tory-led governments of the past six years.
“The government has cut our annual grant by £170million since 2010, leaving a huge gap in our budget,” Hodge said. Continue reading
The withdrawal of prescribed food stuffs could mean that nursing mothers could face bills for the products of more than £90 per week. As one concerned mum put it last night, “For babies with milk allergies whose mothers cannot breastfeed – will they now starve?”
CROYDON COMMENTARY: Veteran Labour councillor for Upper Norwood, PAT RYAN, pictured left, was disappointed to see a local Tory activist being abusive to trade unionists on social media. Here, he calls on Andrew Stevensen and his party to do the decent thing
Council officials working in the planning department did not even allow the application to go before the planning committee of elected councillors, instead refusing the scheme by stating, “The proposal represents inappropriate development on Metropolitan Open Land.”
The leadership of the Croydon Conservatives has been issuing post-truth emails to their members in the south of the borough which include clearly recognisable phrases and false claims usually made by a car campaigner that include dire warnings that the roads around Tory heartland Coulson might, gulp, suffer a fate worse than death: 20mph speed limits.
