A MATTER OF CONVENIENCE ?..

It`s that time of year when the various local authorities and agencies are beginning to announce their Council Tax plans for the coming financial year.   The good news is that our local Parish Council has decided not to increase its precept at all this coming year but the less good news is that both the County Council and the local District Council are each raising their share of the Council Tax by 1.99%.   (Goodness knows what the Police and other `agencies` might do but it all adds up.)

Now 1.99% is something of a magic figure.   If the councils want to go just that bit further and make it 2% then they would have to call a referendum to see what us Council Taxpayers think about that.   So they have dodged that issue - some might call it a cop out - by sticking to the highest increase possible without the need for a referendum.  The downside of a referendum is that the councils would have to bear the costs of organising it which in turn would mean that the Council tax payers end up paying anyway. 

So I`m not too sure whether I`m in favour of the 1.99% tactic or whether I wouldn`t prefer a referendum anyway.  But one thing I do know is that I feel almost cheated by this financial and political sleight of hand; it smacks of a matter of convenience; all a bit sneaky.  Whatever it may be, I`m left with a feeling of being denied the opportunity to have a direct say about the council proposals.  In the absence of a referendum it`s reminiscent of the calls for a referendum on Britain`s membership of the EU, where we haven`t had a vote since 1974.

Once again I am reminded of the three great fibs of life - the cheque is in the post; I`ll respect you in the morning; and I`m from the council and I`m here to help you.

STRANGE LOGIC..

It`s reported today in our local `newspaper,` the Kent Messenger, that parking fines collected by the local council totalled more than £200,000 last year.   This eye watering sum was the result of 8,680 parking tickets being issued to drivers across the council`s area.

Believe it or not, this is actually a reduction in revenue from the previous year, when close on £220,000 was collected.   Back in 2010 over £240,000 was collected from 8,731 tickets issued.   Now the local council employs no less than ten enforcement officers and two supervisors to enforce the council`s own parking restrictions and fines are set at £50 or £70 depending on the nature of the parking offence.   OK, there`s a 50% reduction if the fine is paid withing 14 days but it`s still a pretty hefty fine.

Now up steps the ubiquitous `council spokesman,` who said, "The money raised from parking fines goes towards meeting some of the costs of running the parking enforcement service."   Note  just `some of the costs.`  So it`s a deeply unpopular `service` that costs money and  I wonder if it has ever occurred to the council that if they did away with the parking fines there would be no need for all ten of the expensive enforcement officers and their supervisors.

Seems to me that sometimes councils impose fines just because they can, leaving the council taxpayers to pay for this kind of folly and then pay again if the folly is transgressed.  Sounds like a strange kind of logic to me.  

PACE OF LIFE

An object lesson

It`s quite staggering how many different forms of communication are around these days - Facebook, Twitter, e-mails, snail mail, telephones, even this blog with its facility to comment and so on and so on.  I`ve left out speaking to each other as that is a bit of methodology that seems less and less popular.   But by and large, the thing that all these methods have in common is that they are `immediate` - almost instant forms of communication.   My fear is that instant forms of communication might encourage instant responses - not always the best ones.

Now, 150 years ago or so, things were different.   None of the modern day methods were yet invented apart from speaking to each other face to face and the snail mail.   So, if for example you wanted to ask a question of someone in Australia, you would write a letter which would go by sea and take weeks, if not months to get there.   The recipient would read it, consider a measured reply, write the response and wait for the next mail ship to return your inquiry from whence it came.

It might have taken months but it did have its merits.   The first was that correspondence was carefully composed - care was taken to get it just right.  No room for knee jerking.  And in a way, therefore, the time taken to correspond at any distance governed the pace of life.   You couldn`t hurry if you wanted to and whilst today`s methods might be quick, I suspect the pre-electronic age was more agreeable.   Things were got right rather than got soon.

The other day, I passed our village hall, where the Parish Clerk does her stuff and where the Parish Council meets regularly.   As well as the Parish Council itself, there seem also to be a number of Committees looking after different bits of the Parish Council`s responsibilities.   I noticed an agenda for a meeting of the Parish Communications Committee, which seems responsible for producing the Parish Newsletter, which comes out every so often.

Their agenda invited the committee members to consider drafts of what might go in to the next newsletter, sort out printing and distribution, all of which  takes time, of course.   Previous editions which arrived on my doormat contained information about events and things going on in the Parish at least two months ago and, looking at the agenda, I can see that the next edition will be the culmination of much care, consideration and discussion and I look forward to it arriving through my letter box at some indeterminate date in the future.

I`m not knocking it - honest.   What I eventually get through my door might well be history from way back when but it will at least  be accurate.   I suspect, you see, that the Parish Council have got it right in their Dibley-esque way by hanging on grimly to a pace of life that suits them.   And who is to say they are wrong?



PASS THE PORT...

Something caught my eye today that took me back half a century.   It concerned, of all things, the huge amount of money doled out to councillors in local authorities up and down the land.  Figures just released show that the sum paid out to local councillors topped £200million in the last year.

The reason it struck a chord with me is that, in the formative years of a former life, I worked for local councils in the era before  expenses on that scale were even thought of.   In those days, there were other differences too, for example, elected councillors were addressed as `Mr` `Miss` or `Mrs` and today they are `Councillor....` which gives them a title, a sense of status, almost of entitlement.  

 Expenses were first made available to local politicians in the 1970s – and in the 1990s, allowances, or pay, for councillors were introduced to reimburse local councillors for their time. But the effect has been to produce a generation of professional town hall politicians.  There seems to be a basic allowance running into thousands of pounds, just for turning up at meetings and `special responsibility allowances` for councillors who chair committees, lead councils, have cabinet responsibilites and the rest.   Then there are travelling and subsistence allowances and the bill keeps ratcheting up and up and all these payments combined mean that it is not unusual for some `leading` councillors to take home £40,000, £50,000 a year and upwards.  

The age of the professional politician indeed.   But they don`t have to do it.  They volunteer for election.  And whilst the age of the amateur local councillor may be long gone, they at least had the merit of either doing it for the kudos or out of a spirit of community - maybe they were the days of the big society after all.  So one is left to question the real motives behind the huge number of present day councillors in county and district councils - not forgetting parish councils who themselves have been muttering about paying themselves allowances in their Dibley-esque fiefdoms.

My suspicion and fear is that, rather than any spirit of public service being the guiding light, if over £200million a year is there to be shelled out, then it`s a nice little earner.   Just at the very time when council staff are losing their jobs and services are being reduced and I just wonder whether our elected representatives are able to maintain any grasp of reality all the time they are allowed to treat themselves so generously with other people`s money.

Reminds me of Ipswich Town Football Club in the old days when the Cobbolds ran it from their boardroom and when, for them, they were not too concerned with what was going on on the pitch but got very exercised when their supply of vintage port was running low.  

 NICE TRY..

From our Crime Correspondent

An anxious wait has come to an end with the arrival on Snopper`s doormat of the results of his pathetic, lame duck, plaintive attempt to hoodwink Rother District Council.  A couple of weeks ago, Snopper`s unfailing disregard for the startlingly obvious resulted in him receiving a parking ticket from the Council, having failed to notice a ticket machine in their car park at Camber Sands.

He sent off his cheque for the damage, along with a letter explaining that he was an elderly pensioner struggling in these hard times to eek out a living for himself, Mrs. Snopper and their dog, Barney, and would they mind terribly if they could overlook his senior blunder and let him off.

The result arrived today courtesy of an official communication from the Council, pointing out the error of Snopper`s ways and `respectively (sic) drawing  attention` to the location of the ticket machine which I`m sure will come in handy if he ever returns to the scene of the crime.

He has, however, with his usual sang froid, taken a little comfort from his assertion that, "the Council`s understanding of the plight of the elderly seems to be in inverse proportion to their ability to spell."  Neither was he surprised that `respectfully` does not appear to feature in their vocabulary.

Nice try though.

SNOPPER NICKED AT LAST

Our Crime Correspondent reports

Rother District Council, who operate out of Bexhill-on-sea in Sussex, have a car park at Camber Sands which is just up the road from Rye. It`s a nice area, very popular with visitors, especially dog owners, as a big chunk of the beach is where dogs are allowed to go and do their thing. A couple of weeks ago, the Snopper family, including grandsons and Barney the Retriever, paid a visit to Camber Sands. On arrival, there was a wooden kiosk with a nice young lady inside taking money and issuing car parking tickets.

Last week, Snopper thought it would be nice to take Mrs. Snopper and Barney back for a return visit. On arrival, the wooden kiosk was boarded up, no sign of nice young lady, so Snopper concluded that, as the summer season had drawn to a close, the car park operation had closed down and parking was therefore free. On returning to the car after their seaside ramble, Snopper was surprised to see a penalty notice from Rother District Council, demanding payment of £80 as he didn`t have a parking ticket. This after over 50 years driving and never once exceeding the speed limit brought on an immediate feeling of shame, as much for being found out as for committing the `offence.`

With a painful shrug of his elderly shoulders, Snopper duly wrote a cheque along with a covering letter to apologise for his oversight but also confirming that he is an old age pensioner struggling to survive on a fixed income during the deepest financial crisis for decades and that perhaps Rother District Council would look to providing a clear notice on the boarded up kiosk so that visitors - especially the terminally dim - might purchase a ticket from the pre-payment machine, wherever it might be situated. And he thinks that pensioners shouldn`t have to pay anyway, a campaign being launched, as our picture shows, by a band of Snopper`s golf groupies gathering outside the offices of Rother District Council. The outcome is awaited, but there is real worry that his hitherto unblemished (well, nearly) reputation might finally come to an unfortunate end. Et tu, Snopper?

COUNCIL TAX SHOCK

Yet another interesting `official communication` has arrived today on my doormat. The initial impact of it`s receipt can perhaps be judged by the picture (right.) You see, it was a letter from the local Valuation Officer going on about the Council Tax Band my house is in. It seems that the original valuation goes back as long as April 1991 - 18 years ago - and was translated into me paying Council Tax based on my house being valued within Band F. Over the years the tax has risen to the point whereby this year I`m paying well over £2,000 for this year`s `local services.`

So at first glance the Valuation Officer`s letter seemed to herald yet more glum news. However, on closer reading it states that the Valuation Officer has `had to review the banding of the property and finds that the council tax band is incorrect and needs to be decreased.` The change will come into effect in a year`s time and the local council is being informed so that they can prepare the revised bill and send it to me.

I`m told that I have six months to `challenge` the Valuation Officer`s decision. Fat chance. Why would I want to do that? Presumably I could claim that it should be decreased even more, but I`m a great believer in quitting while I`m ahead. In reality, I imagine the amount saved will be gobbled up by the annual increase in council tax anyway, so I don`t think my life will change dramatically. It was a nice surprise though.

A MELDREW MOMENT....

I hope you will forgive me, but I read something today that made me think, "I don`t believe it." Deep in the tranquil backwaters of Hertfordshire, there is an area which includes places like Rickamnsworth, Chorleywood and Sarratt, the latter being featured by guest appearances in John Le Carre`s spy novels. The district council which administers the area and the 86,000 people who dwell therein goes by the name of Three Rivers District Council after the rivers which flow through the area - the Chess, the Gade and the Colne.

The council has as its Chief Executive one Dr. Steven Halls who is paid £116,000 a year despite reducing his working week from five days to four, so he can `improve his work/life balance` and so that he can `indulge in his love of music` and other interests, including his work as a magistrate. Dr. Halls lives as far away as Nottingham, from where he commutes each working day to the Three Rivers offices in Rickmansworth - a round trip of close on 150 miles.

Now, I hesitate to pass any judgement here simply because I have only read the reports and confess to knowing nothing about the good Doctor and even less about Three Rivers and its seemingly peaceful, tranquil, prosperous, not-much-happening way of life. But there are a couple of general principles that may seem not quite right here.

The first is that it must surely be right for the chief executive of any local authority to live at least close enough to his/her area of responsibility so as to be able to respond quickly in times of crisis or disaster. But more to the point, whatever happened to the old fashioned management notion of leading by example? I have long held the view that the head of any organisation should lead it in a way that inspires confidence and commitment in others and I would imagine that would be hard to do unless one was fully and demonstrably committed to the cause oneself.

Dr. Halls` deal was reportedly prompted by fears that, after five years in the job at Three Rivers, he might be tempted to find work closer to his home. Quite unfairly, I just wonder whether those fears are expressed rather more forcibly by the good citizens of Nottingham than the council tax payers of Three Rivers. But then, I don`t believe it, do I?.