Outrageous council tax rise proposed

cyfrifia wrote:The large events in history are surprising one way and the other, even for those who have an inkling of what is developing. I expect people were surprised by the reality of the atomic bombs that ended world war two. It's surprising that we haven't all been blown to bits since then. People were surprised when men landed on the moon, so much so that many don't believe it.

I expect Chill37 would be surprised if the dustbin collections suddenly improve. In fact i expect come the end of this year bins will be once a month or even longer!

The future is surprising, mainly because it hasn't happened before, so people are not used to it. It would be surprising if an electromechanical genius started using recycled mobile phones, computers, and bits of old cars and microwave ovens to manufacture small but efficient household robots in a shed somewhere and founded a company that made Rochdale the world centre of a new age of robotic devices.

That might not happen though.

johnb wrote:The idea of the cuts is to make councils spend their money more efficiently, not prune services to preserve the artifice of the local government machine.

I have worked all my life in private industry. If I had been only half as inefficient and inept as successive council administrations I would have been sacked for incompetence and be contemplating the world from the gutter.

This lot however keep snouts in the trough whatever the pain to the populace.

It makes you sick!

Hinch wrote: Now come on, this is getting ridiculous. Did anyone actually EXPECT RMBC to hold a public referendum on this issue with all the time and cost involved if they didn't legally have to?

Would this have been a sensible and acceptable use of taxpayers' money or would we too have then used this as another stick to beat them with? (NOTE: Rhetorical question.)

By 'legal loophole' I take it that in this case, the term is used to mean 'acting legally'.

I know they are a crowd of shysters and all that but if the law allows them to exclude PTL and WDL in their calculations then certainly we would expect them to do just that... wouldn't we?

''COUNCIL ACTS WITHIN THE LAW TO AVOID COSTLY REFERENDUM" is hardly going to have me rushing out to the news-stands

Government quote, ‘We have changed the law to give local residents the power to veto excessive Council Tax rises.’

The versatility of the resultant law is unsurprisingly assine. It breaches human rights by its crude ‘Get Out Of Jail Cards’ alone.

RMBC personnel have been primed for public speak about the Waste Disposal Levy element of council tax … hence Teamplayer’s sad narratives on the thread ‘Rubbish RMBC.’

Voter apathy would be unlikely on this subject and Rochdale’s burgeoning army of cohesive volunteers (well-lauded in Borough Policies and strategies by the ruling council and its close associates ) could have organised a referendum at less cost to the taxpayer than a fistful of some RMBC early retirements.

Most pertinently, as a leading local Member of the Official Monster Raving Loony Party, you potentially have to try and get Loonier, because the Party's being out-Loonied here by our local mainstreamers and T H A T .... I S .... R I D I C U L O U S.

Mojo Hill wrote: Most pertinently, as a leading local Member of the Official Monster Raving Loony Party, you potentially have to try and get Loonier, because the Party's being out-Loonied here by our local mainstreamers and T H A T .... I S .... R I D I C U L O U S. [/size]

Bring in the national media even, as Rochdale can afford to be in the news again.

Hinch wrote:Council Tax increases of 3.7% in Manchester and 2% in Wigan have been announced.