In the run up to the elections I am not posting messages that tell people to vote for any particular party, nor over the top and inaccurate attacks on parties.
The site encourages sensible discussion of government policy and options for the future to help inform the general public debate.
April 25, 2025
The unfortunate thing with local elections is that they are no longer local. Local councils are tarred with the same brush that Westminster parties are.
Local councils are now used as a stepping stone for new parties to be recognized.
Perhaps if local councils were truly independent then local issues would be more important as to who got elected, but with Westminster directing so much of what local councils do means local issues become irrelevant.
This needs to change.
Too often we vote for a party, which emphasises how un-independent local elections and councils are. If democracy is to survive then we need to vote for policies rather than parties, but at the same time we do not wish to encourage those Westminster parties that have failed us so badly.
I suspect these local elections will still see a minimal turnout with the emphasis on punishing those parties that have helped to create the intolerable political crisis we are currently in.
April 25, 2025
I do have an anecdote that might be election-related. I live near the boundary of two local election areas. In one, the election has been cancelled. Both are administered by the same political Party. Potholes are rapidly being repaired on the election side. No works being done on the other side, as far as I can see.
April 25, 2025
Surprisingly we’ve had cycle-lanes being constructed at a rapid pace this month ……doesn’t matter; no one will use them !
April 25, 2025
They obviously have the benefit of a crystal ball and wish to avoid the future.
April 25, 2025
To start a sensible discussion of current government energy policy and thinking :-
”Miliband insisted that taxing energy companies at 78%, rather than the usual corporate tax rate of 25%, does not drive up prices for consumers.”
https://www.express.co.uk/news/politics/2045830/ed-miliband-oil-row-sky-news
There’s a little clip of the sky news interview ….its magic
April 25, 2025
Local government elections should be fought on local issues but that is inevitably the first thing to be lost when campaigning begins.
There are local issues that people do care about :
Council Tax, services, and expenditure, for three.
Nobody is happy with the level of council tax charged. Labour wants to restructure it to increase the demands from people like me (us?) to reduce the amount required to be raised from the lesser off.
Nobody is proposing that council tax should be relate to the size of one’s home which is surely a better indication of services delivered than value. Residents in the South are paying far too much compared with those in the North of the country.
Many services being provided are expensive, and do not have the support of voters : the prolific spread of unused cycle lanes is a classic example.
As for expenditure : the cost of local government final salary pensions is no longer sustainable, yet no party is proposing to end these. Manpower has grown with little control and needs to be cut back to below pre-pandemic levels and then by at least another 25% which can be saved through the use of AI.
April 25, 2025
I agree that local elections should be about local issue, but I can’t explain why my mayor, and my regional combined authority mayor and other city mayors are on so many jollies around the world, attending network C40, Strong Cities Network, 15 Minute Cities, Global Parliament of Mayors and visiting other cities just to ‘promote’ their own city
April 25, 2025
Not sure I grasp your point. An elderly couple in a 4 bedroom house are likely to use fewer services than a family of five in a semi-detached.
April 25, 2025
The wheelie bin is the same size regardless of the number of bedrooms.
April 26, 2025
and the cost of emptying the garden waste bin fortnightly is now £90 in Wokingham. The domestic waste bin cost relates to the content, and does the recycling bags. I have a neighbour who fills 5!
April 26, 2025
From my experience living next door to the groups you describe I can only say that they all use ‘services’ but different ones. ie One will need schools and the other medical.
April 26, 2025
However, the elderly who might wish for medical services are unlikely to have seen a GP in years – as is our experience, so resorting to living with ailments which might be becoming life threatening, or indeed paying for opticians /dental work / hearing / physio services. We know of several friends who have paid £thousands privately to deal with health matters the NHS find any reason to add to an endless queue.
April 29, 2025
Chris,
“Residents in the South are paying far too much compared with those in the North of the country.”
how have you worked that out. Many districts in the North have band D and above houses much, much higher than those in the South. Rochdale for instance band D = £2458.09 – Band H £4916.18.
Liverpool band D = £2546.44
Hammersmith and Fulham band D = £1451.42
Kent Council band D = £1691.19
April 25, 2025
But local government elections do give voters a chance to express an opinion on the national government. So lets see what happens.
April 25, 2025
I only wish I could vote in the forthcoming local elections but the government has decided that I can’t. It’s given a flimsy excuse but we all know that it’s because it’s worried about losing out to Reform UK. As far as I can see, this undemocratic decision will surely mean that the results of the local elections will not be a true representation of the views of voters. I believe around 5 million people are being denied the vote. I am extremely disappointed that no ministers seem to be as aggrieved about this as we voters are.
April 25, 2025
Local elections should be about local costs and issues not national ones.
April 25, 2025
While candidates fly their political flag local elections will always be about national issues.
April 26, 2025
I agree. But since we supposedly left the EU has anyone thought of returning to bin collections once a week ? No ! Because the EU, who we supposedly should have left, will not let us due to us agreeing to maintaining environmental policies.
April 29, 2025
Who decides how much the council spends on social care locally? That seems to be the biggest component of our local bills:
Adults and children’s social care 75%
Protecting health and wellbeing locally 4.5%
Waste and recycling by comparison 6%.
Transport, roads, footpaths, cycle routes 2.5%
Reply These figures are distorted by Councils. Education is thei4 biggest spend, around half of total, mainly covered by additional grant they do not report to their taxpayers.
April 25, 2025
If elections had been cancelled in Cuba or Brazil, Israel or Russia, the UK press would talk about nothing else.
If Trump had won the US election with a mere 20% support, the world would treat his government as a pariah.
But when it happens here, tumbleweed drifts somnolently through the media.
April 26, 2025
Quite true
April 26, 2025
I would love to have been able to vote. But I live in one of the areas denied a vote by the government, which it seems intends to replace local elections with regional ones, thus denying any vote on local issues. Cities have very different priorities compared with market towns and rural hinterlands. They will outvote their surrounding areas. An act of gross gerrymandering.