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News and Comment October 2023

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15 October - 300% above inflation in 30 years

Now that I have reached a certain age and can bore people with how I survived a Doodlebug (German flying bomb) and waited for a tram inside the Kingsway tunnel, people tell me that I should be downsizing my house to make it easier to maintain. What a load of rot that is. Ignoring the fact I cleaned the gutters by myself last week, do they not realise that getting older means an ever growing collection of clutter?

Today I decided there was nothing worth writing about here and it was time to throw out every financial document more than six years old. Unfortunately the first file I came across contained all the old Rates bills and I cross checked 1991 against what was on BiB. It didn’t match but that was fairly easily resolved. My source data was taken from Whittaker’s Almanac and they had put the 1990 figures in their 1991 edition.

The correction led to a big tidy up of the existing files and eight new ones created from the rediscovered bills. Separating out the Community Charge years caused some technical issues and the job finished up taking most of the day.

But why mention it here? It’s the staggering level of inflation. In 1990 I paid £280 to Bexley Council and the Bank of England says that translates to £658 in today’s money. I am still in the same house but paying £2,490. OK, I get a 25% single occupant discount but that still makes it three times as much as the B of E inflation rate.

As Councillor Hunt said last week, red tape and mismanagement must be a major factor. A Council insider opined a couple of weeks ago that things were much better when the Council was run by people like the Chief Executives of old. Terence Musgrave and Christopher Duffield who cared for the borough and not so much for their own bank balances.

They sometimes even responded personally if a resident wrote to them. When did that last happen? (In my case when Will Tuckley threatened me with the police for republishing what Councillor Craske had written about me.)

P.S. I remembered later that the failed Chief Executive Gill Steward wrote to me to tell me that all press facilities were to be withdrawn from public Council meetings, no reason given, she was just being spiteful - but the email didn’t arrive because she got the address wrong.

 

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