Budget Season

The setting of the budget at Rushcliffe Borough Council always gets the rhetoric flowing and yesterday’s meeting was no exception.

The word prudence is frequently used by the Conservatives to describe the Conservative approach to managing the council funds. Not that one shouldn’t exercise prudence when dealing with the money of others – that is fairly obvious, but rather they bandy the word around as a way of disguising a lack of ideas. The budget offered last night showed no grasp of the deep and serious issues facing our residents. It did nothing to alleviate the palpable fear many have but rather they took the opportunity to lecture us all about how lucky we are to be facing a council tax increase in the midst of a crisis on household budgets.

The reason the Conservative led borough are continuing to increase taxes, both locally and nationally, is because they refuse to take the action required and continue to rely on the predictable and stable increases to Council Tax and National Insurance whilst pushing a Freeport in the borough where corporation will pay ZERO tax. In fact, the tax that local government should be getting in the form of Business Rates will be subsidised by national government, so again – that’s me and you. And we are told to be overwhelmingly excited about this latest idea that Thatcher kicked out in the 80s!

I have included our alternative to what was offered last night, a few key ways we would do things differently. Have a read, please comment and continue to get in touch with what is happening in your lives so we can fulfil our roles as opposition Cllrs and continue to question the long held beliefs that are making our lives harder as opposed to tackling the issues head-on.