General Chat

I take the point that she is not paying as a matter of principle...but in that case, you make it national, you campaign, you get other like minded people together , you take it to a higher court etc.

BUT if she has money in the bank to pay the bill I think she should pay it , if at the same time she wants to protest, then do so...through the ways I have suggested above, through the papers, through her local councillors and MP, try and get Age Concern etc to champion the cause of reduced rates for pensioners and so on.

Rose :-) :-)

We need another Jack Jones. Whenever my old Vicar appeared at Towcester Magistrates Court in 2005, there was usually a largish crowd to support his rebellion. He got a lot of coverage in local and national press.

He was happy to go to prison, just like this lady is happy to go to prison. But, just a word of caution. Rev Arnold found his week banged up was not as easy or pleasurable as he had expected.

I note from this thread that few of the contributors would stand shoulder to shoulder outside Towcester Magistrates Court or South Northants Council offices to get a fairer council tax deal for the elderly. I WOULD :-)

To answer a point made by John

" If we had a mutual society deciding what we needed as local benefits and what we had to collect from our neighbourhood, the sum total would be very considerably less than these ridiculous bills we have been faced with for last 50 years."

Did they not do a TV experiment on that? for one week or month, a community only paid fo the services it wanted.... unfortunately they could not agree on what that was, so if I remember rightly they went without some of the essentials?

Would a community ( assuming we have such a thing) agree on bin collections, who did it. how much to pay; how often, whether a large family with a lot of rubbish should pay the same as a smaller one who had very little rubbish? apply that conundrum over all the services that are paid for by rates.

Penny has dropped. 8 years ago, when Rev Arnold Ridley was sent down for not paying all his council rates, he was surrounded by his supporters. But there was a small group with banners shouting across the busy A5 in Towcester. Banners said "Genes Reunited members appalled at greedy and selfish actions of Vicar." "Pay up, you old goat" and Dunk him in the Tove"

Now lets get same group together to tell June Farrow what we think.

Edit. Rose, I take your points well. I know that is why we have councillors to help us. But I would like to see how many staff my council employs who earn above £30k, and what they actually do. I would like to not have to contribute massive amounts to their pensions and benefits. And I would prefer councillors to be paid no wage and minimal expenses - which seemed to be the accepted way a few years ago.

Well it "was" lovely to have a thread where everyone agrees with each other - while it lasted :-(

But how would you make it fairer John?

Would a pensioner with 16K ( or 160K....as we don't know how MUCH over 16k she has) have to pay half the rates, while a person working on basic rate with no money in the bank would have to pay full whack? We all pay for services that are not relevant to us...why should older people pay for the childrens play park, why should young people pay for the pensioners services?

I know rates are high, but the services ( certainly here in comparison to what your money got in Wales) are very good. I can't really fault those that I see which make for a better community all told.

When I was younger, I honestly thought that once you got to OAP age (60 for women, 65 for men) you had paid your dues and what you had left would give you a standard of living in old age. You would not have to pay income tax again, however high your income. And, if you did not have enough to feed and clothe yourself, your family helped you, and perhaps you would have to ask for benefits as a last resort.

I think June Farrow would probably think that she and her husband had always done the right thing, and had always tried to avoid being means tested to get benefits. And she is probably horrified that people suggest she down sizes or uses her meagre savings to pay bills that she cannot pay on a small income.

I know lots of people privately agree with her. I do. But few of us are brave enough or want to suffer the publicity and aggro that poor June has had to go through. So we pay up and smile and go back to our beans on toast. Whilst the young family next door on benefits............ :-(

Just seen your addition to post John, I agree that salaries to council employees, councillors ( and others) should not cost more than is fair ( and that view covers politicians at all levels of course ). No one wants to pay money for old rope.

Rose. My first 3 actions if I was a councillor would be:

1. Send anyone packing who has a job title that includes Marketing, Public Relations, Health and Safety or Human Resources. Tree Protection - list goes on.
2. Stop these ridiculous councillor expenses and fees (£14k minimum per councillor here). Set up a charitable fund for those who are in financial bad way to claim so that no one is prevented financially from standing for office.
3. Make managers manage, or ship them out. Waste disposal is an example. We had a flyer telling us from 1st June that recycleable waste would be collected Thursday and we had to put it out at 7am. The earliest it has been collected since June 1st was this morning (Friday) at 8am. In retail, as you know, we managers would have been round late Thursday putting it in boots of our cars if our "team" could not manage to collect it Thursday morning.

16k Plus is not "meagre" savings John, many people work a life time and never manage to have that much in the bank. Many have just enough to cover a basic funeral.

And this of course is the problem...you can't compare pensioners and say all are the same...my friend who did not go out to work is comfortably off with lots to spare, my friend of the same age ( 70s) who worked her whole life has very little. Both still use the services provided for their rates though.

John our rubbish has to be out at 7 also, and is rarelly collected till 9 at earliest ....BUT obviously they do not collect each street at the same time, so 'someone' DOES get theirs picked up at 7.

and you see, there's the rub...I would want 'Tree protection' for my rates, I want 'health and safety' to assess the pavements, and the places I use. So we would not be able to agree on where our rates were spent...and that is just TWO people lol.

As somebody who has headed up a Marketing and Public Relations department in the public sector can I just say how narrow minded and naive I find some of the comments by JohnLovesEtc (no disrespect of course).
Maybe he would prefer certain services to be "farmed out" at even greater expense.
As for the comment about the retail sector. Is that not somewhat Utopian?


I agree with OneFootInTheGrave about things being lovely while they lasted.

Thanks eRRolSheep I instinctively knew it would not last and I for one will not be taking the bait ;-)

A sage decision OneFootInTheGrave and one which I shall heed myself

As the link on the OP wasn’t working last night, I couldn’t read it.

However, going by the report on the other one….

If the lady in question has more in savings than the £16k benefit cut off point, then she should use it to pay her Council Tax. If she carries on refusing, would the Council instruct the Refuge collectors to skip her bins, the Police and Fireman not to answer an emergency call, or the street light outside her house to be turned off?
She might secretly complain about the amount dedicated to educating children as she may not have had any who benefitted. However, the children of other people are the ones who will now care for her when her health declines.

Yes - a 25% reduction in CT for single occupancy may seem unfair. Margaret Thatcher did try to address this by introducing the Poll Tax where a charge was made on the individual rather than based on the value of the property. Look where that got her!

One book I read about management was by Robert Townsend, who made such a success of Avis.

Townsend, Robert L. (1970). Up the Organization; How to Stop the Corporation from Stifling People and Strangling. New York: Alfred A. Knop

What I have suggested is more or less what he did to turn Avis round. He made the managers manage their own marketing, health and safety and human resources (or staff welfare as it was called when I started work). And his managers had to manage within a tight budget - and, yes, they could employ advisers. But within an agreed budget.

But when you have lots of resources, you can have lots of "staff" officers and support teams. When times are rough (and in local government they will be rough for at least another 5 years) you have to be ruthless.

Otherwise there just is not enough disposable income available. And water leaks out of every orifice. No one is happy. Not the staff in local government who are experiencing long pay freezes and extra duties, not the people who just cannot afford these bills (whether it is for local government, power, food or housing). Not even the highly paid local government officers who feel demotivated and worry about their depleting pension funds currently.

Is it right that CEO of Caerphilly Borough Council earns more than David Cameron? I know he/she can earn more in private sector. Well, perhaps that is the answer. A better managed private sector may provice jobs and community wealth to enable us to have all these services we so crave but simply cannot afford.

Incidentally, I don't think it is wrong for a council to defer payments in certain circumstances. If a customer is quite elderly and/or in frail health and has no obvious close relatives to take over her house and assets, it seems ok to agree with the taxpayer that they agree in their will that the money will be recovered from their estate one day.

But it must be AGREED. In a sensitive way. I watch Heirhunters and sometimes think the Bona Vacantia department actually deserve the proceeds of the estate more than the distant and unknowing beneficiaries uncovered by Celtic Research and Fraser and Fraser.

Another good thread hijacked so I am out of here :-|

Thankyou for any respectful withdrawals. Your private decision, OFG - which is totally respected. :-D Thanks for letting us know ;-)
Thread hijacked 18 July 11.26 in my view. Would love to know YOUR definition of hijacking a thread, OFG. Or perhaps I wouldn't :-\ :-\ :-\

Hmmm I am in Caerphilly's boundaries, perhaps you might wish to read this:

http://www.caerphillyobserver.co.uk/news/892777/caerphilly-councils-acting-chief-executive-suspended-after-arrest/

I wouldn't withhold my payments because of that! I think the media reports will serve to punish them.

We get good value for money in the Valleys, eldest lives in posh Creigiau and they pay enormous amounts of CT for exactly the same services as us!