Paid Members ReturnOfTheMack Posted February 27 Paid Members Posted February 27 https://www.doncasterfreepress.co.uk/news/politics/doncaster-residents-face-2-council-tax-hike-5613893 Last night Doncaster Council passed its budget, Reform pushed to change the (Labour) mayor's 4.99% council tax increase down to a 2% increase. Afterwards a local reporter interviewed the leader of Doncasters Reform branch, and its an utter car crash. Quote
Paid Members Carbomb Posted February 27 Paid Members Posted February 27 Something that's been pointed out about the G&D election is that, if we're viewing the voting choices purely in terms of keeping the far-right out, then Green + Labour came to 60%, whilst Reform + Tories came to 30%. It's not great, given how awful Labour actually are, but a lot of their supporters genuinely believe the government are still something resembling left-wing, so if we take them at their word (not easy, I know), the result says there are still more people who want progressive politics in the north-west than regressive. That said, fuck knows what's going to happen anywhere else. For some reason the north-east is now a bastion of the far-right. And with the rural constituencies, that lot could be thinking anything right-wing. Quote
Chico Torres Posted February 27 Posted February 27 I’m hoping this is the beginning of the end for Labour. Never forgive those who enabled a genocide. Quote
deathrey Posted February 27 Posted February 27 I live in an area that sadly has a Reform council and they are putting the council tax up by 9%. Amazingly, their voters still blame everyone else - namely the minority of Lib Dems with seats in our Council. Quote
Members SuperBacon Posted February 27 Members Posted February 27 4 minutes ago, deathrey said: live in an area that sadly has a Reform council and they are putting the council tax up by 9%. I am pretty sure that 4.99% is the maximum they can put it up without a referendum. Quote
Paid Members gmoney Posted February 27 Paid Members Posted February 27 (edited) 15 minutes ago, SuperBacon said: I am pretty sure that 4.99% is the maximum they can put it up without a referendum. Councils can be given special permission to raise it higher than that without a referendum. Ours went up 15% in 2023/24. Edited February 27 by gmoney Quote
Members SuperBacon Posted February 27 Members Posted February 27 7 minutes ago, gmoney said: Councils can be given special permission to raise it higher than that without a referendum. Ours went up 15% in 2023/24. I didn't know that, and I work for one of them! Quote
deathrey Posted February 27 Posted February 27 26 minutes ago, SuperBacon said: I am pretty sure that 4.99% is the maximum they can put it up without a referendum. Our council was one of those given special permission as it's on the cusp of bankruptcy. Tory run for years so an absolute shit show. Quote
Members SuperBacon Posted February 27 Members Posted February 27 14 minutes ago, deathrey said: on the cusp of bankruptcy Technically this can't happen. But a section 114 ain't a good thing! Quote
westlondonmist Posted February 27 Posted February 27 41 minutes ago, deathrey said: I live in an area that sadly has a Reform council and they are putting the council tax up by 9%. Amazingly, their voters still blame everyone else - namely the minority of Lib Dems with seats in our Council. Councils are skint and I can completely understand why they are doing it, and I don't think it's something that you can blame on Reform. They did claim that they would get rid get rid of ineffeciency though and I think the fact they'd pretty much failed shows they talk shite. Councillors realise once there that while there is a lot of money spent on nice to have things rather than must have, the general public think of a lot of that nice to have stuff as must have. The council I work for has risen by 2% (the part for social care) and frozen the main part. We can't afford it but it's essentially a pre-election bung, we do have permission to put above 4.99% in 2028 though and whomever wins in May will probably have to follow through on that. They did it in 2023 after winning the election as they promised it, service cuts were made the same year to cover the freeze. It was advertised that we could afford it by Labour, load of bollocks but what can you do. The residents already have one of the lowest council taxes in the country. Quote
Paid Members Devon Malcolm Posted February 27 Paid Members Posted February 27 How do you come back from this. Quote
Paid Members Jazzy G Posted February 27 Paid Members Posted February 27 What really saddens me about the by-election are the rumours I've heard and posts I've read suggesting that Starmer would rather Reform got the seat when he realised Labour weren't going to win it. It's a brilliant result and I was so glad when I saw the Greens had won this morning. I did get a bit involved in some arguments with bots on Facebook, but at the same time I can't remember last time I was this arsed about politics. It may also have been because I used to live in that constituency years ago when Gerald Kaufman was MP. It'll certainly be interesting to see what happens going forward. Quote
Awards Moderator HarmonicGenerator Posted February 27 Awards Moderator Posted February 27 (edited) 6 hours ago, Carbomb said: For some reason the north-east is now a bastion of the far-right. This is such a sad thing. For so long, the narrative for the NE was "you could nominate a broom for election and people in this area would vote for it if you said it was Labour". And that's not true at all now. Although weirdly, the Berwick constituency (now North Northumberland), which had been Lib Dem for decades under Alan Beith, and went Tory when he retired in 2010, is now Labour for the first time in at least half a century. So that's something, at least, maybe... Edited February 27 by HarmonicGenerator Nikolaos Dabizas Quote
CTXRussomark Posted February 27 Posted February 27 Polanski is all over the news today (as you would expect) and has been almost faultless in his ability to fend off the usual bad faith questions from Sky News etc. If he/they can maintain some of this media momentum it could make for a very interesting set of results come May. The biggest thing working against the Greens historically has been how easy it was for the media to write them off as the loony vegan lefties who only really care about environment issues. Polanski getting this platform to talk about actual issues like immigration, Israel, Trump etc. AND excel while doing it could be a game changer. Quote
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