Dixie wrote:
Unlike the ten-yearly national census, it will not be legally compulsory to fill in and return the form.
Yet.
As we know, most councils demand ever-increasing council tax (above inflation), and many are determined to make as much revenue as possible from "decriminalised" parking (how lovely that term must have initially sounded to drivers). But the service doesn't get any better, it gets worse if anything (e.g. fortnightly rubbish collections, another "green" measure which is actually done for different reasons, and anyway, except for cans, recycling doesn't make sense), and the extra money they make instead goes on pointless things like this survey, as well as highly paid non-jobs like Climate Change Handwringing & Spin Officer and Safety-Related Bureaucracy Creation Consultant (not to mention Pointless Survey Writer). And countless other things of course, like road "safety" projects which are really just about restricting the motorist (isn't it strange how no "safety improvements" ever make things more pleasant, rather than less so, for the motorist anymore?) Some of these are requested by NIMBYs, but some are just dreamt up by councillors (who may even have undeclared vested interests, e.g. family living nearby), and in any case it's far from obvious to me that obstructive "traffic calming" measures are actually helping any road user.
People would be somewhat less irritated about all the money that councils take if they saw evidence of it being spent effectively. After all, higher taxes leading to more services is fundamentally what some people want. But higher taxes leading to nothing useful isn't what anyone wants, except the councils.
Talking of the parking revenue scam, I was thinking that maybe things would improve if the government changed council funding in the same way as scamera partnership funding, i.e. gave each council a fixed grant and didn't allow them to keep the PCN money anymore. Sadly I think it's the only way that council parking enforcement will ever be about keeping traffic moving (and minimising the very congestion that the council itself currently creates) and so on, rather than giving out as many tickets as possible. It's obvious that it's just too tempting for them (and their parasite contractors, such as NCP, whose car parks everyone here should boycott) to abuse the system at the moment.
Pretty much every large town has now jumped on the decriminalised bandwagon and AFAIK revenue-raising is always the priority, which is reflected on the ground, and also when the councils unreasonably reject appeals (even though they know they don't have a case) in the hope that the person will back down and pay up (some are worse than others with this). At the very least I'd like to see such councils penalised for backing down at the last minute (as they do when they don't want a precedent set at adjudication), because at the moment they have nothing to lose by holding out until then, and some councils seem to do it every single time. If they back down before adjudication, they've been trying to get money which they knew they weren't entitled to, so they need to be "encouraged" to consider appeals properly. The current practice is a mean-spirited and dishonest way of taking advantage of frightened old ladies and the like, who know they're in the right but just want to make it go away, partly because they're worried that the verdict will unfairly go against them, and who can blame them?
So in summary: many councils take too much, don't give enough back, and a lot of what they do give back is pointless. Every year the situation gets that little bit worse. It doesn't really seem to matter which party is elected. Since all this happens so much, perhaps the problem lies with the general system. Maybe there should be sweeping changes to the current tiered system, and a review of who gets what powers, taxes, etc. Councils should be rewarded for satisfying people; so perhaps an unloaded survey goes round asking people if they're happy, and higher scores lead to increased pay for councillors and some officers maybe. (If it led to more funding then people would just put high scores regardless.) People should get more of a say locally; I like the idea of American-style local ordinances, placed on the ballot by members of the public and then voted on. I wouldn't really know what else to suggest, but I think we do need radical changes to make the whole thing more public-friendly, give them value for money, and make them actually like councils (at the moment "council" seems to be a byword for "incompetence").
We should however wait until the current clowns are out of government, otherwise they'll undoubtedly make the whole thing worse. (Please Tories, (sorry, "Dave"), you're still too similar to the current lot...start talking sense now and you might just have enough people behind you by 2009/10...you've got an open goal and have never had so many ridiculous Labour policies to shoot down in flames!)
_________________
Paul Smith: a legend.
"The freedom provided by the motor vehicle is not universally applauded, however: there are those who resent the loss of state control over individual choice that the car represents. Such people rarely admit their prejudices openly; instead, they make false or exaggerated claims about the adverse effects of road transport in order to justify calls for higher taxation or restrictions on mobility." (
Conservative Way Forward:
Stop The War Against Drivers)
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