Birmingham bankrupt

Stick to frontline services. Any Council. Anywhere. Sack regeneration. Sack anybody in the Chief Executive department.
 
bluethrunthru said:
Thurrock is not in Northants its in Essex. And you can compare them in that Brum gambled on a court case goings its way and Thurrock gambled on investments with what turned out to be a conman

www.theguardian.com

Thurrock council hid losses as it gambled millions on risky investments

Official report criticises Tory-run authority’s dysfunctional leadership and says it tried to silence critics
www.theguardian.com www.theguardian.com
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I know where Thurrock is, the reference to Northamptonshire was because it’s the other one the tories lost.
 
johnnytapia said:
I blame @gordondaviesmoustache and his eye-watering expense claims when he worked the Birmingham Court scene.
“£8.50 again on Tippex?”
“It’s not easy being the Clerk and knowing where to put all these apostrophe’s.”
“Claim accepted.”
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This doesn’t make any sense in the context of the thread!

Know lots of good people at BCC, and at officer level it’s a well-run council, but it has suffered from poor leadership, misconceived corporate strategy, poor planning policy, is not sufficiently business friendly, has spunked a load of dough on a completely wank IT system and has had huge issues with historical equal pay.
 
gordondaviesmoustache said:
This doesn’t make any sense in the context of the thread!

Know lots of good people at BCC, and at officer level it’s a well-run council, but it has suffered from poor leadership, misconceived corporate strategy, poor planning policy, is not sufficiently business friendly, has spunked a load of dough on a completely wank IT system and has had huge issues with historical equal pay.
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But what about their analysis on Brexit?
 
MouldensChippy said:
Is there a tax payers alliance ? I'll take your word for it. ;-)

So, are you going to pay more tax ?

I did on one of my accounts, and they never asked my why the extra, or where it came from. Though they did notice after three years that they were missing cash from elsewhere. It only took them 9 months of threatening me before they realised that they actually owed me money....

Maybe you could get your council tax banding upped, then go round all of your neighbours to suggest that they do the same...... They'll love you for it !
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Perhaps we should lobby for changes to the council tax banding ? At the moment someone who lives in a nice house worth £321,000 in 1991(Band H) pays as much as Rees Mogg in his £5 million town house or as much as Sunak in his £6.5 million country home.

Maybe .... just maybe..... a tax designed by the Tories shouldn't be so skewed to benefit the upper classes.
 
Ifwecouldjust....... said:
Perhaps we should lobby for changes to the council tax banding ? At the moment someone who lives in a nice house worth £321,000 in 1991(Band H) pays as much as Rees Mogg in his £5 million town house or as much as Sunak in his £6.5 million country home.

Maybe .... just maybe..... a tax designed by the Tories shouldn't be so skewed to benefit the upper classes.
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Bring back the rates.

Having extra bands for more expensive houses doesn't do much for councils with not many expensive houses.
 
gordondaviesmoustache said:
This doesn’t make any sense in the context of the thread!

Know lots of good people at BCC, and at officer level it’s a well-run council, but it has suffered from poor leadership, misconceived corporate strategy, poor planning policy, is not sufficiently business friendly, has spunked a load of dough on a completely wank IT system and has had huge issues with historical equal pay.
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It was a few years back now but I supplied services to BCC for a number of years and I'd echo your sentiments. Sadly its not the only government body local or central to fuck up it's IT strategy or implementations by any stretch of the imagination.

I think the corporate strategy bit is interesting in a wider context, local government in the UK is now a bit of a patchwork-quilt in terms of models and approaches etc in addition to being starved of budget I doubt this helps.
 
threespires said:
It was a few years back now but I supplied services to BCC for a number of years and I'd echo your sentiments. Sadly its not the only government body local or central to fuck up it's IT strategy or implementations by any stretch of the imagination.

I think the corporate strategy bit is interesting in a wider context, local government in the UK is now a bit of a patchwork-quilt in terms of models and approaches etc in addition to being starved of budget I doubt this helps.
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Councils and governments are not the only ones to mess up their IT systems, it was surprisingly common a few years back, IT did suffer from snake oil syndrome, and over promising, unfortunately many people got taken in by it, because they did not understand what they were procuring, happily things have moved on a bit, and there are people in place in most authorities that do understand (plus with the advent of cloud based systems it's actually become easier to farm out much of the expensive hardware etc
 
Ducado said:
Councils and governments are not the only ones to mess up their IT systems, it was surprisingly common a few years back, IT did suffer from snake oil syndrome, and over promising, unfortunately many people got taken in by it, because they did not understand what they were procuring, happily things have moved on a bit, and there are people in place in most authorities that do understand (plus with the advent of cloud based systems it's actually become easier to farm out much of the expensive hardware etc
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Yes, I was going to add the point that it's far from exclusive to councils or government but was too lazy to edit the post :-(

I agree, things have definitely improved since the worst of the wild west days but I think the statistics on project failure are still pretty dire and if you take the NAO at face value, central government still struggle hugely in this space. I think the pace at which IT became critical in many organisations outstripped the execs ability to properly understand it, in a way that they understood other core parts of their business and I think that problem still lingers. You see plenty of execs eyes glaze over in a 'just sort it out' approach that they would never default to with other aspects of the business where they are more actively engaged, despite the IT being mission critical.
 
MouldensChippy said:
So, you are saying that the tax burden isn't high enough, and that you would happily pay more to be squandered.

You'll find that other councils have had to cover their own malfeasance by raising council taxes by large percentages, but no doubt you'd be happy to pay that.

Mr blank cheque, perhaps you should apply to be an executive at your own local council !
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Council tax increases are capped (controlled) by central government.
 
Vic said:
Bring back the rates.

Having extra bands for more expensive houses doesn't do much for councils with not many expensive houses.
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And yet in the north we have some of the highest council tax for the poorest areas, I live in oldham it’s nearly £2k a year yet in London it’s cheaper! I’m sure Labour under Brown wanted to reclassify council tax, so if you had extensions etc because everything is based on 1991 prices. If anything the Poll tax in that every adult pays their way seemed fairer to me, youve now got a situation where people are living at mum and dads a lot longer than used to, they use all the same facilities as mum and dad but don’t pay, if you live alone you pay less, surely that’s got to be fairer.
However I’m with you rates would be better than anything.
 
Blue Maverick said:
And yet in the north we have some of the highest council tax for the poorest areas, I live in oldham it’s nearly £2k a year yet in London it’s cheaper! I’m sure Labour under Brown wanted to reclassify council tax, so if you had extensions etc because everything is based on 1991 prices. If anything the Poll tax in that every adult pays their way seemed fairer to me, youve now got a situation where people are living at mum and dads a lot longer than used to, they use all the same facilities as mum and dad but don’t pay, if you live alone you pay less, surely that’s got to be fairer.
However I’m with you rates would be better than anything.
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So you would penalise people again for having to live at home? How do you know they aren't putting in to the bills?
 
Blue Maverick said:
And yet in the north we have some of the highest council tax for the poorest areas, I live in oldham it’s nearly £2k a year yet in London it’s cheaper! I’m sure Labour under Brown wanted to reclassify council tax, so if you had extensions etc because everything is based on 1991 prices. If anything the Poll tax in that every adult pays their way seemed fairer to me, youve now got a situation where people are living at mum and dads a lot longer than used to, they use all the same facilities as mum and dad but don’t pay, if you live alone you pay less, surely that’s got to be fairer.
However I’m with you rates would be better than anything.
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Land is scarce. People should be charged for occupying it. Abolishing the rates has saved the rich billions.
 
Mr Kobayashi said:
So you would penalise people again for having to live at home? How do you know they aren't putting in to the bills?
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one person makes rubbish, two people make more rubbish, three people more, all Adults can use the services provided and pay an equal share, if one person pays £100, then two people pay £200, if you have another two adults living it that house then that bill comes dow to £50 each, yet they are getting the same benefits from the system as the person paying £100! They may well be paying towards the household but they ain’t contributing as much as the 1 or 2. It’s not about penalising people it’s about paying your way and contributing your fair share. Another benefit is they’d appreciate how much it actually costs to run a house these day.
 
Blue Maverick said:
one person makes rubbish, two people make more rubbish, three people more, all Adults can use the services provided and pay an equal share, if one person pays £100, then two people pay £200, if you have another two adults living it that house then that bill comes dow to £50 each, yet they are getting the same benefits from the system as the person paying £100! They may well be paying towards the household but they ain’t contributing as much as the 1 or 2. It’s not about penalising people it’s about paying your way and contributing your fair share. Another benefit is they’d appreciate how much it actually costs to run a house these day.
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It costs more to collect rubbish in rural areas than a block of flats does it not?

Why have a flat rate for all areas?
 
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