Lambeth Save Our Services Public Meeting - 20 November

[One_Stop_Shop]

Lambeth Save Our Services Public Meeting - 20 November, St Matthews Tenants Hall in Brixton, 12pm.

There will be speakers from local campaigns and trade union branches and work shops on welfare, housing, education and health. Will put more info up soon but put it in your diary

 

[where to]

For info: LSOS website has this listed as Saturday 21 Nov

http://lambethsaveourservices.org/calendar/

the 21st is a Sunday so you're right they're wrong!

 

[Laughing Toad]

Not only are they wrong about the date, they're wrong about the cutbacks. We would be much better with a much smaller local government. According to this site Lambeth Council tax Band A is £823.41, and Wandsworth is £454.54. That's a big difference.

I think Lambeth need to make bigger cutbacks.

 

[tarannau]

Oh come on, that's a totally unfair and ludicrous comparison with Wandsworth, once the 'no poll tax' flagship tory bunch of bastards

How about a fairer comparison with Croydon (£973.29), Southwark (£814.64), Hackney (872.18) and neighbouring Merton (941.95)?

 

[Laughing Toad]

Because I think we should be compared with the best and not the worst.

 

[Streathamite]

Because I think we should be compared with the best and not the worst.

LB Wandsworth is certainly not the best - except at minimising the tax burden on those most equipped to pay top whack. Lambeth has far more deprivation, social problems etc than wandsworth, yet they consistently outperform them, have done for a while, on delivery and quality of a wide range of services.
If you want to minimise your counciltax fine, but that comes with a cost - substandard frontline services, of the type you may well use.

 

[Laughing Toad]

I quoted Band A which is the lowest, not the top whack. Wandsworth minimise the tax burden on everyone.

The Audit Commission rate councils every year. They rate Wandsworth much better than Lambeth.

Wandsworth - 4 stars
Lambeth - 3 stars
Southwark- 3 stars
Hackney - 3 stars
Merton - 4 stars
Croydon 3 - stars

 

[co-op]

Not only are they wrong about the date, they're wrong about the cutbacks. We would be much better with a much smaller local government. According to this site Lambeth Council tax Band A is £823.41, and Wandsworth is £454.54. That's a big difference.

I think Lambeth need to make bigger cutbacks.

Why not just get rid of local govt altogether? And central govt obviously because that costs money too.

Any more genius ideas you want to share?

 

[smokedout]

Not only are they wrong about the date, they're wrong about the cutbacks. We would be much better with a much smaller local government. According to this site Lambeth Council tax Band A is £823.41, and Wandsworth is £454.54. That's a big difference.

why do you think that might be?

 

[smokedout]

Tonight, just heard, not sure I'll make it

Tuesday 8th Nov – Defend council housing – tenants protest at Parliament – 5.30pm, College Green, London SW1

 

[Streatham_Mao]

Because I think we should be compared with the best and not the worst.

In the real world, we compare like with like. It's far more useful.

 

[Laughing Toad]

In the real world, we compare like with like. It's far more useful.

I was comparing all of the boroughs Tarannau listed. I understand that they are not alike. That was my point. Wandsworth is a better council with lower taxes.

 

[Plumdaff]

In the real world, LT, you might have a point comparing Lambeth with other councils with similar levels of poverty and deprivation - particularly Tower Hamlets which achieves a 4 and charges a whopping £30 a year less for band A per year. In fact most London boroughs charge around the same council tax except for Westminster and Wandsworth - wonder whether a mixture of demographics (in the case of Westminster, not always..ahem....naturally occuring demographics) and ideology might just explain it?

 

[Laughing Toad]

Lagtbd, I'm not sure which parts of your post are intended to be sarcastic, and which aren't. Yes differences in ideology explain why Wandsworth have a better and less expensive council than us. I want more of Wandsworth's ideology and less of Lambeth's.

 

[co-op]

Lagtbd, I'm not sure which parts of your post are intended to be sarcastic, and which aren't. Yes differences in ideology explain why Wandsworth have a better and less expensive council than us. I want more of Wandsworth's ideology and less of Lambeth's.

The only way that "differences in ideology" explain why Wandsworth has such low council tax is primarily that it has been the beneficiary of huge subsidies from central govt, initially because the tories under Thatcher were desperate for a showpiece council to boost the Poll Tax and subsequently because of the massively complex funding formula that came in after the failure of that tax. Under the Damping Grant system, (designed to prevent wild swings in annual grants) areas like Wandsworth which have been rapidly gentrifying effectively are still being funded on the basis of the much higher social needs that existed when the grant levels were set 20 odd years ago. From memory Wandsworth has received something like 6% of all the damping grant rebates (amounting to nearly £400million) when its population is about 0.4% of the national one.

The tory administration has also benefitted from hundreds of millions of pounds worth of one-off asset sales of council assets (at least 10 schools, many industrial units etc). The fact that so many schools have been sold off may explain why the borough now has one of the highest rates of private education of any borough - I wonder how many of those parents are really better off than if the local council could provide a decent public alternative?

Wandsworth also charges about 25% more for council rents and leaseholder service charges than the average for London; since many of the council rents are paid through Housing Benefit (paid for by central govt) this is another transfer from central govt to the council. This appears to be a trick that Lambeth have now decided to follow - too bad it screws the working poor living in council accommodation.

They won't be able to keep these levels of council tax indefinitely, the whole thing is highly artificial.

 

[Laughing Toad]

You're arguing that Tory Wandsworth was favoured by the Labour government which was in power for most of the last decade. That would be remarkable if true.

Selling off unneeded buildings is better than keeping them, and I'm less keen on social housing than anyone here. My only question now is how do we get these Wansworth people elected in Lambeth?

 

[co-op]

You're arguing that Tory Wandsworth was favoured by the Labour government which was in power for most of the last decade. That would be remarkable if true.

No I'm not. I know you're basically a troll with an agenda and you obviously know almost nothing about the topic under discussion, but I think a reasonably careful reading of my post would allow you to see that because the post-Poll Tax funding formula included a weighting method (the "damping grant") that prevented central govt from altering its contributions by more than 3% p.a, a borough that has experienced a rapid change in its social profile can still 20 years later be receiving large top-ups based on its social profile from the early 1980s. At that time Wandsworth was an industrial working class borough, there were 15,000 industrial jobs on the waterfront alone in the 1970s. It now has over two thirds of its population in managerial white collar jobs. So it has been able to steadily cut its social spend (fewer needy people) while being subsidised as if those people still existed. The fact that New Labour didn't try and totally revamp the funding formula doesn't indicate anything about its opinion of Wandsworth torys policies (although I daresay Tony Blair would have thought they were great).

So true, not remarkable, and your infantile anti-tax agenda is still facile.

Do you understand that?

 

[One_Stop_Shop]

Lambeth Save Our Services Public Meeting - 20 November, St Matthews Tenants Hall in Brixton, 12pm.

Lambeth Save Our Services (S.O.S.) is a Community, Trade Union, and Tenants campaign dedicated to fighting cuts in Public Services, Health, Education, and Welfare. To build on the success we have achieved in 2010 we are inviting you to a public meeting to discuss the way forward, how to build mass resistance to Con-Dem Cuts and a programme of action for Lambeth.

Speakers Include:

Lambeth Pensioners Action Group (LAMPAG), Jon Rogers; Lambeth UNISON, One O'clock Club Staff and Service Users (how we fought job cuts and won)

Workshops:

Keeping the NHS Public, No to Cuts in Housing Benefit & Welfare, No To Cuts In Housing, No to Academies; Stop the Privatisation of Education

The Cuts announced in Con-Dem Spending review will destroy jobs, Public Services, Schools and Communities! We won’t pay for their Crisis!

This meeting is supported by: Lambeth Save Our Services (Lambeth Pensioners Action Group (LAMPAG),
Tenant’s Council, Defend Council Housing, Lambeth UNISON, Lambeth GMB, Lambeth NUT, Lambeth UCU)

 

[Laughing Toad]

No I'm not. I know you're basically a troll with an agenda and you obviously know almost nothing about the topic under discussion, but I think a reasonably careful reading of my post would allow you to see that because the post-Poll Tax funding formula included a weighting method (the "damping grant") that prevented central govt from altering its contributions by more than 3% p.a, a borough that has experienced a rapid change in its social profile can still 20 years later be receiving large top-ups based on its social profile from the early 1980s. At that time Wandsworth was an industrial working class borough, there were 15,000 industrial jobs on the waterfront alone in the 1970s. It now has over two thirds of its population in managerial white collar jobs. So it has been able to steadily cut its social spend (fewer needy people) while being subsidised as if those people still existed. The fact that New Labour didn't try and totally revamp the funding formula doesn't indicate anything about its opinion of Wandsworth torys policies (although I daresay Tony Blair would have thought they were great).

So true, not remarkable, and your infantile anti-tax agenda is still facile.

Do you understand that?

I understand you to be saying that Wandsworth took decisions which have subsequently proved to be benneficial. I'm all for that.

 

[co-op]

I understand you to be saying that Wandsworth took decisions which have subsequently proved to be benneficial. I'm all for that.

Hmmm. So your "low taxes always = better decision-making" thesis has been exposed to a little contrary evidence and the best you can do is bluster? Off away with you sonny, this thread is for grown-ups.

 

[Laughing Toad]

I'm saying Wandsworth is a better council than Lambeth, and it charges less council tax. Neither of these facts is in dispute. You seem very proud that you've found out one way it has taken advantage of central government handouts, but Wandsworth has done nothing that Lambeth couldn't have also done. If your heroes (socialists) had been leading Wandsworth then the borough would still be in decline blaming central government for sacking 15,000 waterfront industrial workers. Wandsworth has been making better decisions than Lambeth for 20 years, it would seem. Yes Co-op lower taxes equal better decision making.

Lambeth Council spends my council tax like drunken billionaires. The best way to Save-Our-Services is to make bigger cutbacks. Wandsworth did it, now Lambeth should.

 

[co-op]

I'm saying Wandsworth is a better council than Lambeth, and it charges less council tax. Neither of these facts is in dispute. You seem very proud that you've found out one way it has taken advantage of central government handouts, but Wandsworth has done nothing that Lambeth couldn't have also done. If your heroes (socialists) had been leading Wandsworth then the borough would still be in decline blaming central government for sacking 15,000 waterfront industrial workers. Wandsworth has been making better decisions than Lambeth for 20 years, it would seem. Yes Co-op lower taxes equal better decision making.

Lambeth Council spends my council tax like drunken billionaires. The best way to Save-Our-Services is to make bigger cutbacks. Wandsworth did it, now Lambeth should.

I guess you are right that Wandsworth have historically proved better at squeezing the Westminster tit than Lambeth, but whether that's really "good local govt" when it's just a silly piece of political claptrap for idiots like you to delight in, is another question.

You seem to think that you ought to pay less council tax but more income tax and then central govt can subsidise local govt a bit more? Sounds pretty silly to me, and doesn't exactly square with your "low taxes = better choices". It always amazes me how you small-govt types actually love adding more and more layers of accountants and bureaucracy into the mix.

Or are you just pissed off that you don't live in Wandsworth? Because that's 100% your fault.

 

[Laughing Toad]

Or are you just pissed off that you don't live in Wandsworth? Because that's 100% your fault.

I live in Lambeth because I'm committed to mixed communities. I believe that people like me should live next to people like you.

 

[One_Stop_Shop]

Laughing toad go and support the tories and leave the fight back to the rest of us.

 

[stethoscope]

I live in Lambeth because I'm committed to mixed communities. I believe that people like me should live next to people like you.

That's most considerate of you.

 

[co-op]

I live in Lambeth because I'm committed to mixed communities. I believe that people like me should live next to people like you.

Well pay your council tax then and stop whining about it.

 

[Laughing Toad]

I believe that people like me should live next to people like you.......so that I can enlighten you.

 

[stethoscope]

You're not exactly doing much enlightening so far, but rather coming across as a bit of a cunt.

 

[co-op]

You're not exactly doing much enlightening so far, but rather coming across as a bit of a cunt.

LT has just done his A levels I think; he's got a lot of jargon (remember "opportunity costs" LT?) and he has every conventional economics opinion of the last 25 years, but as soon as a debate goes below skin-deep, his ignorance shows immediately.

You're right, he does come across as a cunt; but his ability to stamp around claiming to know the answers to everything indicates a private education and TBF, since I believe that environment is dominant in this kind of situation, the fact that he's a cunt is not really his fault.

 

[Laughing Toad]

You've lost the argument so you resort to personal abuse.

"Walks away chuckling."