When I was 21 I was elected as a County Councillor for the new Oxfordshire serving the newly enlarged area taking in Oxford City and parts of North Berkshire. I became Chairman (equivalent to today’s Executive member) of the land, buildings, procurement, Architects, Surveyors departments giving me a cross Council remit.
I was keen to get spending under better control and limit increases in local taxes. It was agreed in the majority Group meeting that I could lead a move to cut the large and fast growing bus subsidies.
I was drawing public attention to the bizarre theory of bus subsidies. This said you offered subsidy to buses tackling social need, defining social need by the size of the loss on the bus route. This idiotically meant that if a bus company ran a bus service no one used that would make the biggest losses and could then claim it therefore had the greatest social need! Instead of incentivising bus companies to maximise fare revenue and passenger numbers this gave a perverse incentive to lose more to get more grant.
I asked the officers and bus companies to draw up a plan for an unsubsidised route network to get a feel for what was possible. They invited me to chair a meeting to present their conclusions. The paper presented very large cuts in services with particularly large cuts in the town I represented.
I thanked them for their work and told them we would go for the no subsidy option. They remonstrated volubly and asked if I had read the bit about my town, knowing I was always most attentive as a local member.
I said I had of course read it. I did not believe a word of it. There was no way the bus companies would destroy their businesses by removing so many services. That would mean unaffordable sackings and mothballing of buses, Their harsh treatment of my area had swayed me, underlining the fact that the whole paper was a silly try on.
They went away and developed a pattern of services capable of carrying more passengers. Taxpayers were spared large subsidies for bus services people did not want. Councillors have to overrule the defence of bad performance and extra spending.They have to see when the waste and stupidity of the worse parts of the public sector need to be changed.
Even then some of the environmental/ roads officers were anti car. The annoying ones drove to the central offices to their reserved parking places to design anti car and anti parking schemes for others. I told them we did not want these schemes and if they persisted I would require them first to surrender their special car spaces and come to work by some other means as an example to others. That stopped the anti van and car strand of work.
October 9, 2025
Your last paragraph is a good approach to use. I am sick to death of “do as I say not as I do” people like Starmer, Ed Miliband, King Charles, Net Zero May, Sunak…
October 9, 2025
So Kemi will abolish stamp duty (only for main residences) if she is leader at the next election AND if she wins a majority AND if the Tories actually deliver their promises this time. JR did not like my estimated odds on this last time so I will limit myself to “highly unlikely”. After all we never got the £1m each IHT promised by the dire Osborne. Also note that in the 14 years under Cameron, May, Boris and Sunak top stamp duty rates went from 4% to 15% I think!
Renters will this have to pay extra rent to cover stamp duty that landlords will still pay also extra rent as Osborne appallingly robbed landlords of full interest relief. Is this fair? Surely we want free and fair unrigged competition in all forms of housing provision?
October 9, 2025
Matt Vickers, deputy party chairman saying exactly the right things about just how damaging stamp duty is and why it would be so good to get rid of it this morning. So A. why did the Tories increase it from 4% to up to 15% over 14 years and B. why only remove it for main residences? It is just as harmful to the economy for other sales.
Questioned by Mike Graham on Net Zero he dithered but said they would repeal the climate change all that nearly all tories voted for, no mention on May’s moronic Net Zero act that was nodded through. What is your policy on petrol and diesel car when will the Tories ban sales? “I do not know” he replied but he still thinks we should encourage more green less polluting electric cars. But they are just pollution elsewhere cars and usually more pollution.
October 9, 2025
Kemi has big problems. Firstly she needs to restore trust that what the party promises would actually be delivered. After 14 years of vast & deliberate betrayals on four manifestos – the only real way to do this is to gain power and actually deliver. But to gain power she needs the trust first. So a catch 22.
Secondly she now leads a central party and thus loses votes to both sided any movement to the left or right may win some votes but loses other. Like the dire Libdims or the SDP middle parties rarely ever gain much real power.
She is grudgingly being dragged towards Reform positions on Stamp Duty, Net Zero, the ECHR, immigration… but is is obviously grudging and half baked.
October 9, 2025
Kemi has problems! So has that fool Ed Davie.
From BBC website.
The number of Liberal Democrat party members has almost halved in the last five years, according to BBC analysis of available figures. The figure has fallen from just under 118,000 in 2020, when Sir Ed Davey became leader, to 60,000. That is despite the Lib Dems having their most successful general election ever last year in terms of seats won.
A party spokesperson said “in actual elections, more and more people are backing the Liberal Democrats”.
A Liberal Democrat spokesperson said: “We have a record number of MPs, the most popular party leader in the country, and elected more councillors than Labour or the Conservatives for the first time ever in May’s local elections.
Membership halved? Points to half paid up members wanting a serious politician with serious views, the other half of them want the clown antics.
October 9, 2025
@Lifelogic – thank you
October 9, 2025
Kemi yesterday quoted Thatcher “If every Labour Government is prepared to reverse every Tory measure, while Conservative Governments accept nearly all socialist measures the end result is only too plain.”
Indeed and they have failed massively at this. Churchill and the others failed after the disaster of Attlee, Heath Thatcher and Major partly failed after the disasters of Wilson/Callaghan, Cameron, May, Boris, Sunak totally failed after the appalling disasters of Bliar/Brown. Indeed the Con-socialists pushed largely the same lefty lunacy just v. slightly less – hence we got the appalling Two Tier! Despite the country was crying out for real Conservative policies!
Reply You never give any credit. Thatcher reversed Labour penal taxation, taking top rate of Income tax down from 98% to 40%. She reversed excessive nationalisation, transforming our telecoms and energy sectors.
October 9, 2025
And Bliar sold off our energy systems to foreigners the tories instigated Net Stupid and now we are short of electricity. Had anyone else had the memo from Neso regarding 3 hour rolling power cuts.
Every day pictures of smarmy politicians posing whilst our main coal fired power stations were blown up should be shown on TV.
October 9, 2025
@IAN WRAGG – when the same doctrine keep producing the same mistakes, you do wonder why Parliament, its Uniparty hasn’t found the brain cell to tell them to learn..
October 9, 2025
Indeed the power cut in Spain in summer caused by solar and wind instability killed about 11 people directly a large one in the UK might kill many more! Yet Miliband is still for full steam ahead with his energy vandalism.
October 9, 2025
Good old Alister Heath today.
This is the scandal that could bring down Keir Starmer
“From the Chagos deal to the proposed new super embassy, Labour is kowtowing to China – the West’s civilisational enemy.”
Let us hope so.
There is an acrid, almost unbearable stench emanating from Downing Street, the unmistakable pong of scandal, sanctimony and perfidy.
What is it about Sir Keir Starmer, human rights lawyer extraordinaire, and China, a country that cannot see a human right it doesn’t want to stamp out?
October 9, 2025
LL,
Five in a row today. Splitting posts up is a good wheeze. Allister Heath features but you haven’t even mentioned, PPE degrees or money going down the drain yet.
October 9, 2025
Matt Vickers read law and business management at Teesside University,and later studied at the University of Law. Vickers he previously worked at Woolworths and Home Bargains. So no PPE people today. I too worked at Woolworths for the odd few days while at school.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_University_of_Oxford_people_with_PPE_degrees
A rather depressing list with perhaps 3 or so exceptions! Is it the actual course or the types drawn to such a degree like moths to a candle?
October 9, 2025
Often rather worse than just money down the drain it so often does vast net harm as with HS2, Net Zero, most red tape, the net harm Covid Vaccines, paying people to encourage them to not work, the net harm covid lockdowns, 90% of employment red tape and tribunals…
October 9, 2025
Also when government money is used to fund political propaganda as it so often does it does huge net harm. We see this all the time as with the Covid vaccines and lockdowns!
October 9, 2025
Morning Sir John,
Very interesting tactics but, you have to assume that current councillors have the same common sense and tactical thinking which you clearly possess.
There was a huge jump in the cost of bus fares when fuel duty and vat were added to bus fuel, something they had always prior been excempt from. When you have vehicles which have a MPG of ten or so, the added duties and taxation makes a huge difference to the bottom line. Now of course, with the new Labour job taxes and costs added by net zero, it’s a wonder any business can make it pay.
It does seem to me that, many councils will cut headline grabbing services but keep huge back office numbers and still keep events, such as the Chairman’s Reception event going.
October 9, 2025
Cliff – any Council wishing to make savings also has the challenge of doing so within the context of having a huge chunk of their income sucked away by Special Needs and Final Salary Pensions, over which they have little practical control I suspect.
At one time these ‘needs’ were clear to see (and sympathise with) but nowadays their definition & scope has been so broadly interpreted that it often seems that everyone is ‘Special’ (which of course they are, most especially my Grandchildren!) but perhaps not so special that I need (or want) to subsidise them.
As for Final Salary Pensions, they have to the the ultimate “inequality” Something that the Private Sector cannot afford to provide its staff but is a ‘given’ in many Public sector jobs. So when Treasury “officals” (presumably all with indexed linked FS pensions) want to scale back on maintaining the value of State Pensions because it is “unafforadable”, then perhaps they should agree to move to a Money Contribtion Pension themselves first. Coucil Officlals (demanding higher local rates) could first agree to the same pension arrangments that most of their rate payers have to live on. And Pigs might fly one day….
October 9, 2025
IanT,
Good morning,
I agree with what you say. I suspect that getting a SEND classification or statement, opens up access to extra benefits and other additional services.
At one time, employment in the public sector meant a lower wage but the best pension now, not only do they get a great pension that most can only dream off, the salaries too are now really competitive especially, the additional benefits in the shape of holiday and sick leave and special discount schemes for public sector employees.
October 9, 2025
We had a pleasant young lady come to work for us as a ‘Temp’ for a couple of months. She had previously worked for the local Council. She was generally punctual and got on well with the other office staff, so we decided to offer her a permanent position. Almost immediately, she started taking sick days off – always on Fridays. When asked why, she told me that at the Council, she got four weeks ‘holiday’ leave and four weeks ‘sick’ leave and that she liked to make sure that she used it all. She wasn’t very happy when I explained that at our company it was four weeks ‘paid’ leave and that was it !
October 9, 2025
A special tax on state sector pensions perhaps 90% if over £25K why after all should private sector tax payers (often with little pension provision themselves) have to vastly subsidise these over generous state sector pensions? After all it was the bloated state sector that caused nearly all the economic problems and decline over the past 40+ years.
October 9, 2025
I wonder if you might speak about the corruption and underhand favoured contract providers at some point Sir John. Perhaps also mention why road signs are forever being erected where no benefit is to be seen from such. A example of this is the pointless few yards of a reduced speed limit from the national down to 40 then fifty yards on down to 30 with count down markers every 100 yards to ensure the planting of pointless signs carries on.
Then perhaps we can hear about the proliferation of electronic display sings which cost thousands and advise us there is a bend ahead or a cross roads. There is never any shortage of money for these pointless wastes of public money.
October 9, 2025
Indeed serving vested interests or even pure corruption surely. Endless junction remodeling usually with a worse system after all the disruption and remodeling!
We even had the VIP lanes for PPE procurement which is blatant & visible to all corruption surely?
October 9, 2025
All very sensible john and as you say 50 years or more ago. Times were different then and I bet council finance was a little more transparent. Also there wasn’t the need for social care provision like today.
The SEND programme is probably the biggest waste of money. It seems a badge of honour for parents to declare their child has special needs. ,£ millions is spent on taxis and chaperones taking children to special schools. In time gone by these children would be in a lower stream catering for their needs.
The whole welfare scam needs root and branch reform because it’s become a vehicle for fraud and waste similar to the Motorbility scheme. Endless taxpayers money to enrich the few.
Reply Plenty of social care spending pressures then and a big issue re school transport costs.
October 9, 2025
We still have the absurd situation where the DWP funds a Motability car for the transport of children, and the council funds a taxi to ferry them to and from school. The whole setup needs reforming. The cost of the welfare system has got out of hand. Is there any other country providing this level of service? The UK must have the highest number of disabled children in the world due to the lucrative rewards on offer.
October 10, 2025
i spent a long time visiting sick relatives in Birmingham childrens hospital. (likely a higher proportion ed) of the patients are in there due to conditions caused by their parents being first cousins. the pain and suffering this causes is off the scale. yet the country incentivises such children, as it entitles the parents to a lifetime of very enhanced benefits. that the main stream political class is not prepared to take on this issue is driving this country into the ground.
October 9, 2025
reply to reply……school transport issues caused by much increased house building, higher birth rates in immigrant areas, poor new school planning, bussed move of pupils from closed school… I’ll stop there.
October 9, 2025
I had to use the buses in Oxford for a while to get from the railway station to Cowley to visit a large company while we were running down a contract with them. Easy days – a few hours work, lunch and then I had the rest of the day to myself to look round the town before heading home.
Back in the very early 1970s there were fewer cars on the road and few issues with parking. No such thing as congestion charges in London. I could drive into Central London,park in a company space and drive home using short cuts off the main road. I could park on Waterloo bridge for free for a night out.
Now when I go to various towns there are massive queues for buses and few options for free parking. Places with train services are a better option, particularly at weekends. Assuming of course there are no engineering works on the lines, which has become a new racket.
October 9, 2025
When I was 21 ,I had just qualified after working sometimes 100 hours a week,studying for finals,being on call for theatre during the night,taking amounts of responsibility which wouldn’t be allowed today and getting 3 buses to get to work on a day and night shift.
There was more relevant theory packed into a days work than the mountains of named waffle which students go through today trying to make themselves academically significant.
October 9, 2025
For some reason I was unable to comment on yesterday’s diary but I thought the text could have been taken directly from the script of Yes Minister! Today’s diary has a similar theme revealing deeply embedded problems within the Civil Service both central and local. They appear to thrive on delay and obstruction even resorting to devious tactics. This is totally unacceptable and a new government will need to undertake a root and branch approach to effect change, modifying or repealing any relevant legislation as necessary. There is something rotten at the heart of central and local government!
October 9, 2025
We can only applaud! The key ability is to know when you are being fed a load of hogwash, and call their bluff. It is they who will always act in their own self interest. Depend on that.
This is warfare and we are fighting for freedom, an increasingly rare option on earth. All around I hear people actually advocating some sort of dictatorship as a better alternative to ‘English democracy and capitalist trade’.
It is BECAUSE of our failure to secure the essence of that system that it’s corrupted form can be adversely compared to a (benign) dictatorship.
BTW the multi-millionaire Lenny Henry says a fair valuation of the effects of black slavery is reparations of £18 trillion. As the English put a stop to that trade, is that not therefore what our action is worth? Should those who would still be slaves were it NOT for Wilberforce and our Parliament owe us exactly that amount?
I’m happy to take a downpayment of The Caribbean Islands and Henry’s millions, earned in England. Perhaps Liberia too which was bought by the GM company as a home for the progeny of former slaves who wished to return home to Africa.
October 9, 2025
So Lenny Henry has finally said something funny!
If you are say only 10% black or just have a good tan do you get a 10% share? What if you were related to the Africans who caught and enslaved them and then sold them on? Is this only Afro-Caribbean blacks? What if you are say half black and half slave owner genetically?
October 9, 2025
Will hundreds of thousands, if not millions say ‘not needed – we’ve had a better life in the west than we would have got in Africa’.
October 9, 2025
You mean like Oprah? She already has her trillion😂🤣
October 9, 2025
£18 trillion is about £600K per household – probably about double their total average assets!
October 9, 2025
Add to that Abbass demanding £2 trillion in reparations for ‘palestine’ – and now we have lost the British isles, what are they worth, how much is that native of Britain owed?
October 9, 2025
Is that why I often see large empty buses driving around polluting the air?
October 9, 2025
Well buses are inevitably empty much of the time either they are doing the reverse rush hour directions or during the the middle of the day.
They leave the depot empty slowly fill up and then return out of town fairly empty to repeat! Such is the logic of buses! Often average occupancy, depot to depot, can be as low as under 8 for a double deck bus that can carry 60!
October 9, 2025
@Lifelogic – yup, you cant have one without the other. Maybe a system such as operated by Uber or Lift in some conurbations(I did say some) could work, the fill with traffic in both directions, even for their own personal journeys to and from work and its on demand. Elsewhere when we had a UK Mail Service, the urban areas deliveries were as regular as clockwork and did move paying passengers.
There is a need to open things up to competition, not control competition. As a fan of motor sport I could equate the how F1 regulations killed competition, killed the sport. Everything is geared to stopping the man in a shed( a Ken Tyrrell) upsetting the apple cart and competing to the benefit of the consumer. But, sometimes I have to control myself.
October 9, 2025
It’s when well-meaning gestures get wrapped up in a sort of a ‘me to’ situation. If someone gets a taxpayer hand-out (although some miss guided people call it Government handouts) others think I will have some of that, and why shouldn’t they.
In today’s NutZero world we have people that can afford new cars, being given handouts that do ultimately come from people that can’t afford new cars. That in some way is called by those practising it Socialism.
Similarly, if you can get paid not to work, engage in new leisure activities, not contribute to society, for not much different in reward that making the effort of having to enduring the UK infrastructure system, it should be of no surprise what some choose.
Then you have the pension situation, those that are forced to contribute for 35/40 odd years only receive more or less what those that never contributed get.
? with the subsidies bus routes, is it the route in isolation that is funded or is it the fare itself?
All starts out well meaning all gets salami sliced until the taxpayer give-a-ways are frankly unaffordable.
October 9, 2025
Today’s other question. Why aren’t builders producing houses, simples when the economy takes a dive too much money is expected to get tied up in hope, so it doesn’t. These commercial operations hang back with the expectation the government will be forced to rip off the taxpayer so that they can get subsidies. That in turn forces prices up and the spiral begins all over.
The what ifs are not being asked or answered. It is just wanting to be seen as the voice of the well-meaning, get the next election sorted, before the practicalities come into play
How, much UK Taxpayer subsidy, to industry etc. has simply been exported to other tax domains? Paid to organisations that do not have the UK as their prime tax home. Part of the economy is the money moving around the economy within the economy it becomes self-feeding. Joe Biden was seen a Socialist joke character he rolled out taxpayer subsidies every where to try to get the economy moving and businesses flooded in for handouts. There was a ‘but’ you had to have the USA as your main domain for not only a base but for all taxes. That included UK business, tech companies, moving lock-stock and barrel to the USA. The reason was that if taxpayer money is going to US businesses it will flow out into the community, move around, cause an economy and arrive back at its starting point at some time. The UK version is to cut out the UK economy its surviving businesses and just send it to prop up foreign domains, for it never to return. The export not creation of wealth, exporting tomorrow. How much of the UK’s NutZero industry is just money to China and elsewhere?
October 9, 2025
What was possible fifty years ago, being announcing “…if they persisted I would require them first to surrender their special car spaces and come to work by some other means as an example to others”, today surely would see allegations of bullying and the entire staff off work with PTSD but on full pay.
October 9, 2025
I myself saw this kind of inverted logic practiced by the Unions overmanning at docks in Hull where Dockers were in each other’s way due to minimum manning unloading small coaster ships. Container simplified this problem and released them for more productive and less arduous work, but not without many problems.
Many other wasteful legacy practices have been prevalent throughout industry but jettisoned by the need to sink or swim in the competitive Private Sector.
The Public Sector is riddled with bureaucratic duplication as witnessed just by the silly idea of wanting ID cards duplication of NI numbers, Hospital Numbers, Passport number s and many other Numbers.
Glaringly obvious to everyone except the PM who doesn’t understand this basic fact and even knows less about AI which would show this to him.
October 9, 2025
@Ukret123 – agreed
October 9, 2025
Sir John
Into the mix of bizarre uncompetitive commercial decision’s that are coming through the back door from Government Quangos. Highlighted today with the announcement that is Ofwat will allow Water Bills to explode. This on top of Ofgem increasing price that must be paid by the consumer. Its not a minimum increase it is the new norm.
It’s a perverse sort of way we still get Government Control at play, in the free-market place. University fees were never supposed to be universal the original basis meant the higher performing Institutions offered more and charged more. Then a Quango got involved and fixed a maximum price (a maximum price!) that has now become the min/max price.
In some ways Buses can be competed against one and other, water and energy not so much. State interferences are bad; State pricing is bad. But so are operations that are let lose on the Public without the possibility of competition.
You are going to remind me of Telecoms. Yes, there is seemingly competition, competition where BT tells/orders all the operators that they ‘must’ increase prices on the 31st March of each year by inflation plus 2.5%. Those that are outside this cycle of dictatorship are not universally available, restricted by the authorities in one way or another.
Things should never have been nationalised in the first place, but the UK’s version of privatisation failed to find away to let the market decide, let the consumer have true real freedom of choice.
My real and only point is that a free-market, with customer choice is destroyed by government thinking they know best, better than the consumer, the person paying the bills. As such they destroy the very thing they even suggest they wish to champion. There is not even free trade between Countries because Government weaponise that. No one defends what they pronounce. To many hypocrites think about the next election and how to champion themselves as the giveaway voice – by blackmailing people with their own money
October 9, 2025
the probate service is so bad that they are employing judges (called registrars in their case) who are not even legally qualified.
given the massive delays to this basic service you would think there is lots of scope for some half sensible management, but the senior management has already been changed and they are still crap.
just scrap the whole thing and let the regular courts do it. at least the judges are properly qualified.
October 9, 2025
@iain gill – we have seen how some of what was an independent legal industry morph into political enemies of the State(meaning the people of this Nation) becoming full on Socialist if not the Marxist as a super political power that has no sense of impartiality at any level. Even their training is from institutions that no longer thinks of impartiality being part of its core. Its of no surprise of course when we see their two tier views of justice applied every day.
They need, just our defenders of democracy to get their houses in order or tomorrow they will be made irrelevant.
October 9, 2025
1,075 criminals were illicitly shipped, into the UK yesterday on the 8th October from France…One Thousand and Seventy Five (1,075) and the opposition is silent ?
October 9, 2025
Labours one in one out deal exposed, actually 10,000 in 26 out
https://www.gbnews.com/news/migrant-crisis-home-office-france-returns-shabana-mahmood