By Phil Coffers
CRUMBERLAND Council really is extracting the urine from Council Taxpayers as well as their money.
Silken-tongued spin merchants in the Labour-run authority’s “communications and marketing” team have just issued a report about the public’s response to its budget consultation.
The results of the consultation now show that of the 125,000 households in Cumberland just 419 coughed up their views on a planned rise in Council Tax.
The Council says that 53.2% of those responding to its survey either strongly agreed or agreed that they WANTED a rise in Council Tax.
What the Council conveniently DIDN’T say and what was not spelled out by our rigorous local media is that this equates to just 222 people wanting to give more money to the local authority!
Even if ALL of Cumberland’s 125,000 households paid Council Tax and they will not because of illness, disability or low incomes – it would still mean that the consultation was answered by less than 0.6% of the Council Tax-paying population.
Interestingly, the budget survey was also shared with “COUNCIL STAFF and COUNCILLORS“.
Little wonder where the mythical support for Council Tax rises might be coming from…
The Labour unitary authority and its voting fodder will all put their hands in the air in March to steamroller through another Council Tax hike of 4.99% onto “working people”, while managers quietly get to work on chipping away at £21 million of “savings”, i.e cuts.)
Noticeably, the Council fired out its budget consultation to the public between December 9 and January 6 when most people would have been focused on Christmas, rather than wasting time on tedious surveys that they know won’t make a shite of difference to the eventual decision.
Even the Council concedes that its consultation should not be wholly relied upon as a metric of public opinion, which begs the bleedingly obvious question: Why do one then?
Council spinners spluttered: “The consultation is not designed to be a statistically representative sample of public opinion in Cumberland but a gauge of the opinions of those people and organisations that have chosen to participate in the process.”
This massive caveat has not stopped various newspapers and news websites here in Cumbria from confidently running headlines such as this:
The Council’s silken-tongued spinners guarding the reputation of the People’s Republik of North & West Kumbria will be most impressed.
With favourable headlines such as this, it’s a case of mission accomplished.
However, as one of the more discerning commentators on one of our local “newspaper” websites grumped: “Utter twaddle.”
PS: 25% of Council Tax is said by the Taxpayers’ Alliance to pour straight into the pension pots of, er, Council staff.
Happy rises all round!
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