Under pressure7:06pm on 23 Nov 2009#28 handclapping "it might open up the discussion of areas for savings if legislation was passed specifically allowing services to be supplied directly, in cooperation and / or conjunction with another or by contract. Then local authorities could embark on doing their own reorganisation from the bottom up, rather than have Parliament yet again prescribing how we blow our noses."
Excellent suggestion. Better still if the powers were given to the community councils along with the ability to determine which they provided themselves, delegated to their council or collaberated on with neighbouring community councils. Small can be cost-effective as well as beautiful.
"Why didn't Salmond implement a 3% increase in the standard rate as an interim measure?" That's what was tried in the budget voted down at Holyrood by the serried ranks of the 3 unionist Tweedles.
"If he really wanted to remove the Council Tax system, why didn't he do that?" And cut what, precisely? AND/OR And raise the money how, precisely?
"You do realise that picking fights with UK/English bodies is an integral part of the SNP independence campaign, don't you?" I assume you mean Westmidden by UK/English bodies. If not, please clarify. Given that, and given the known dissembling coming from Westmidden, particularly in the last dozen or so years...
I regard it as the civic duty of every citizen in every nation of the UK to question the veracity and the motive for releasing every piece of information emanating from the cabal who seek power over the rest of us rather than to serve the people. Some organisations are better placed to do that, of course, and the SNP is one, but clearly they too have an agenda.
"You're also completely wrong about HMRC" The Thunderer didn't seem to think so in its SNP's local income tax is illegal, says Revenue going on to claim: "Mr Hartnett's letter effectively means that a 3p-in-the-pound local income tax would not be collected through PAYE". The alleged illegality, BTW, was that A "local income tax" could not be the same as the "Scottish Variable Rate" long before the bill to bring the budget into effect was even discussed at Holyrood. How like Carroll's dear old red queen.
"Brownedov, you deny the legitimacy of the SNP's accounting figures!" Do change the record, R-E. You've been arguing for more than a year that the GERS are accounts when they are in fact estimated statistics based substantially on "analysis of official UK and Scottish Government finance statistics".
"When the WGA's give the same stats, you are just going to deny them too." Quite probably, because they will be audited not by an independent professional body but by an individual nominated by Duff Gordon in the HoC and carried by acclaim. If Cameron reaches the top of the greasy pole, I would distrust his motives for anyone he appoints, too as I would if in Scotland the public auditor was appointed by the FM.
If you have evidence that the SNP wanted their LIT proposals to fail, I suggest you provide it. So far as I am aware, the only squabbles with Westmidden were re council tax rebates plus HMRC's admission that more than a decade after the Scotland Act, their systems were unready to collect the taxes provided for within it.
"light-touch regulation" That does not equal light-headed.
"huge amounts of management time in 'gold-plated' regulation" i.e. not three separate management-heavy organisations spending most of their time trying to pass the buck to each other.
Do you seriously suggest any state has a worse regulatory system than the one Duff Gordon put in place for the UK?
"The SNP's planned LIT would have centralised local taxation" Arguably only because of the Scotland Act, which allows the Scottish Government to set only one national rate in variance to the UK basic rate.
"so now expecting the SNP to start pushing for even more centralisation on the grounds of 'economies of scale'" But there I rather agree with you - it's a function of the top down nature of UK polity, with functions being "devolved" from the centre rather than being "delegated" by the hoi polloi to whomsoever they choose.
OTOH, your beloved Tories have hardly been decentralisers in practice and NuLab are even worse.
Introducing the Swiss concept of the Commune, with its power to choose to which Canton it belongs and giving the citizenry the right to approve or reject what functions should be carried out by which levels of government would work and work well, but which party would introduce it? The old Liberal Party might have, but the current unLib unDems are nearly as centralising as NuLab.
Increasing the powers of the community councils might just be a start, but if any such economies of scale are to made they should be approved from the bottom up not the top down.
Re McConnell, perhaps Gray Iain needs to be ready to fend of a challenge, which may explain what the Dundee wifey informed us yesterday concerning Gray Iain's alleged £3,450 claim for what she describes as "Acting Lessons".
With apologies to the FM for paraphrasing him, I don't mind Mr Gray's delivery so much as his policies.
I rather agree re NI, although the new unionist alliance might end up with at least one minister in a Cameron government, even one with an overall majority.
For the island of GB, all I'm actually asking for is a simpler version of Electoral Calculus' User-defined Regional Poll, whereby vote shares for only three "rows" are entered instead of having to split the "England" vote into 9 separate components, and preferably three extra rows of output showing the "national" seat counts by party.
I do realise that would decrease its accuracy at one level but that would be compensated by the more frequent use one could make of it, since virtually all of the GB polls allow getting at the "England" figures quite easily. As the GE approaches, I hope we'll also have more Welsh and Scottish polls to make those predictions more realistic but who we're next ruled by is still most likely to be determined by English voters, and the predicted seat counts by party in England could make a real difference in the Who can protect us best from a Tory UK government? debate in both Scotland and Wales.