Thursday 13 January 2005

Look in your own backyard

Scottish local government seems to be remarkably inefficient in matters financial:
LOCAL authorities came under fire yesterday after new figures showed that £600 million in council tax remains uncollected since 1996.
Most of those local authorities are dominated by the Labour party. Note this:
And Tom McCabe, the finance minister, demanded improvement and urged those authorities with lower collection levels to seek advice from some of the better performing councils.
But Mr McCabe is himself a member of the party that is so lax at collecting Council taxes. I wonder how many of the defaulters in Glasgow are employed by the City Council. Quite a few I would think. Shouldn't the City payroll department be able to perform a simple bookkeeping adjustment and stop exploiting those of us who do pay taxes on time?

1 comment:

David Farrer said...

Comments made on previous template:

Stuart Dickson
-"Shouldn't the City payroll department be able to perform a simple bookkeeping adjustment...?" 
 
That argument runs completely counter your "never voting Tory again" campaign over Michael Howard's pledge to support statutory ID cards. I thought that the whole point was that you opposed the shady system of interconnected state databases which lie behind the card? Instead you advocate yet another linkage between state databases. 
 
Some consistency please David. 
 
For a more consistent, and positive, view of the world please check out my shiny new blog.

16 January 2005, 09:36:05 GMT
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maps and starcharts
Glasgow City Cooncil are appalling at collection, and have a very sinister way of enforcing 'debt collecion'. 
 
An acquaintance of mine checked her bank account just before Christmas to find that it was £2000 less than it should have been.  
 
The Cooncil had obtained a court order to freeze her account. Obviously she was, ahem, concerned. After much stress and many phone calls later she discovered the order was in respect of a 'debt' of £100 from 7 years ago. 
 
The 'debt' was of course a Cooncil error, and she was entirely innocent of any wrongdoing. The money was only restored to her account this week. The Cooncil made no apology. 
 
There are so many alarming things about this story that I don't know where to begin....

13 January 2005, 21:48:28 GMT
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Neil Craig
It would be interesting to see if the 10% of Glasgow wards held by non-Labourites have the same non-payment ratio.

13 January 2005, 20:14:12 GMT