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News and Comment December 2020

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18 December (Part 2) - Suckered

Somewhere in the back of my mind I had the idea that the GLA Council Tax precept for 2021/22 is going to rise by 21% and then this morning I spotted the comment (below) from Sir Kneel Starmer.

He very easily gets up my nose and was complaining that Council Tax is to be allowed to rise by 5% next year. The word hypocrite sprang to mind as I compared it to Khan’s projected 21%. A fair amount of Googling ensued as I planned a critical blog, but where did the 21% come from, the Daily Mail or some such rag?


Starmer Tweet Spoof leaflet
Google was not my friend. It found only a selection of PDF files about a GLA budget consultation going on now and every likely figure for a tax increase I could found was in the region of 2%. I began to suspect that my limited knowledge of accountancy was causing the 21% to be hidden from sight.

But eventually Google got me to the bottom of the conundrum. The 21% comes from a spoof leaflet put out by Conservative Mayoral candidate hopeful Shaun Bailey. If he is prepared to make things up to scare voters including me it becomes a case of hopeless rather than hopeful.

It is a disgraceful thing to do and I do not like being suckered. So that’s two candidates I cannot vote for should there ever be another election.

Incidentally, Robert Jenrick’s claim that Council Tax is now cheaper in real terms than it was in 2010 is pretty much correct for Bexley. The Bank of England inflation calculator does not yet extend to 2020 but the figures suggest that the 2020/21 tax rate in Bexley is about £100 to the good over the past ten years at Band D. All of that is just about to fly out of the window!

 

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