DESPITE ALL the talk of "cuts", the fact remains that Government spending continues to rise and that certain budgets, such as overseas aid, continue to soar, even though the state has to borrow nearly £3 billion a week to cover them. Nearer to home, the equivalent of overseas aid seems to be "climate change", on which councils spend money like there is no tomorrow (which presumably is the justification they might offer for their profligacy).
So writes Booker, on a theme that is familiar to EURef readers. It would have been really interesting to have known what the result of a Council Tax referendum might have been in Camden Council - where the libraries are being closed. Some commenters suggest that we need to be able to vote on categories of expenditure, in order to prevent this sort of thing. And what would the government do if the voters then blocked Councils from spending on items that were a statutory requirement and/or required by the EU?
You can thus see why the government would be reluctant to allow people to have real power. They might spend the money on libraries instead of sustainability officers, and that would never do. For sure, local decisions can be made by local people – as long as they don't actually change anything.
COMMENT THREAD
