I may well have picked up this piece by Chris Montcrieff at the same time as Autonomous Mind, but for the moment I'm not as fast as I once was, having to do an amount of eyelid testing between blog posts.

That leaves me trailing in his wake, enabling me in part to compliment AM for a fine piece and echo his theme, that it is a shame that so few of the commentariat seem to understand what is going on with local authority finance.

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Many councils (eg Barnet) are openly following the business model of budget airlines: the headline price is only half of the story, an equal amount of income being derived from add-ons and extras, most of them crafty and which one would normally expect to be included.

In some cases, the business model is followed to the letter. It's well known that Ryanair and others rip you off for booking with plastic (even a debit card). The sector is notorious for it. Local authorities are now charging for plastic: http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-11422795 (mainly for credit cards but in a couple of cases for debit cards).

One can (very easily) choose not to fly with Ryanair. One cannot so easily move out of a council thiefdom to avoid its surcharges.

You are far too kind and give me far too much credit, Richard. My post largely echoes the excellent work you have done bringing local government finance to wider attention.

Although not quite on topic, it is about democratic deniers.
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article ... shows.html
Massive breakthrough. Not just drip-drip-drip.
Biggest selling Sunday fingers BBC as being dishonestly, systematically, intentionally, knowingly, ruthlessly, implacably biased against global warming sceptics.
The BBC DID deliberately excude the likes of Dr North and Autonomous Minds and others from TV, radio and online on global warming.
They ran expensive seminars instructing staff to exclude global warming sceptics from coverage across the BBC.
The basis was that this voice, these facts, were not to be heard.
These people were not to be allowed on TV and radio. FULL STOP.
The democratic process destroyed.
We need this week's blogs and daily msm to really run with this.
What other subjects have they deliberately excluded Dr North and others on ?
Who will be sacked as a result of this breach of The BBC Charter ?
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article ... shows.html

What is incredible is that the BBC were clearly systematically leaning on producers of light entertainment, comedy, music, drama, to propogate global warming lies.
This was national brainwashing on a Stalin-esque, Goebbels-esque scale.
It clearly was eventually defeated by the blogs.
The blogs now need to expose, and both press and embolden the national newspapers and honest BBC journalists to refuse to systematically deceive the public on another subject.
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article ... shows.html

Yes, it is a charade. We have the same kind of thing going on here in Ottawa ... Capital of Canada, BTW.

The city mayor runs, and wins, on a platform of ONLY a 2.5% increase in municipal tax per year, for his four year term. But, he received an additional 3.5% from the provincial government this year ... so he COULD have cut municipal taxes by 1% and still be within his financial goals. Did that happen...?

Fact is, elected politicians are powerless in front of the bureaucratic machinery that they have allowed evolve. And note, just as in the UK, here in Ottawa, the "City Manager" earns more than the "Mayor". The city manager, also, obviously has much more power because he can hire and fire at will; the Mayor must go through the City Manager.

It is often stated, here at least, that the Municipal Council is the executive that controls the management of the city. But it doesn't; it leaves decisions, especially difficult ones, to the management, who have the cover of ... it's an Escher engraving of responsibility and authority.