How much is your Council Tax ?

littlegreenman

After saddoe allowance reduction, £76 a month, and that's on the 10 month plan! But I'd wager I probably live in an area with much lower house prices than, well probably all of you, and the area's a dump

thomasross20

Isn't it true that in mainland Europe, there is no such tax? Though taxes are higher in general (but they're paid better in some occupations, and you can see where your taxes go, unlike here!)

Stevepage

£139 a month for a 1 bed flat in Watford. All that council tax and the roads, public areas etc look amazingly horrid still.

Phil_aka_Pip

Stevepage said:

£139 a month for a 1 bed flat in Watford. All that council tax and the roads, public areas etc look amazingly horrid still.

The whole of Watford is horrid. Everything about it is horrid.

Stevepage

But....We've just got a new market

Nah it's a shit hole. We may be moving out of here this time next year, I don't think I want to bring my future kids up in this area.

Evilmags

Council paying one private company on a long contract is daft. Several companies competing with each other and paid by people individuals would work and drive down costs.

Phil_aka_Pip

Evilmags said:

Council paying one private company on a long contract is daft. Several companies competing with each other and paid by people individuals would work and drive down costs.

1st clause. True.
2nd clause. False.

Competition only leads to price & quality cuts. Given the same pay rate & cost of materials, it's cheaper for council staff to do the job directly, otherwise the job costs = pay+materials+profit.

Paul_C

£135/m here (3 bed semi)

DiscoStu

Lonely guy discount gets me £75 per month, band B.

3-bed end terrace in Moray.

Axe_meister

£1400 a year for a 4 bed terrace in SE London.

Evilmags

Phil_aka_Pip;380993" said:

Evilmags said:
I
Council paying one private company on a long contract is daft. Several companies competing with each other and paid by people individuals would work and drive down costs.





1st clause. True.

2nd clause. False.



Competition only leads to price & quality cuts. Given the same pay rate & cost of materials, it's cheaper for council staff to do the job directly, otherwise the job costs = pay+materials+profit.

Utter nonsense. Let's just look at a proper competitive service, like technology. Loads of offers at every pricepoint. I pad or Tesco. Apple or Android. The mechanism of free competition drives development to the benefit of consumers.

Just by trying to make an equation on price all you show is ignorance. A price is simply what someone is prepared to pay for something.

In the case of rubbish collection no price exists because there is no market, just coercion. A simple look at anything people buy on a free market confirms this. The fact is that people buying rubbish collection through their council have no choice. This leads to abuse by a service provider. By preventing other service providers from lowering prices through competition you ensure shite services.

Councils are run by self serving morons of the type that used to be in the NUS when they were kids. Thinking they can run anything better than a competitive industry is so wrong headed it defies belief.

chillidoggy

The final pension scheme for public sector employees probably makes things a little more expensive?

Evilmags

chillidoggy;381434" said:

The final pension scheme for public sector employees probably makes things a little more expensive?

Given that it is unfunded of course it does. My pensions were a joke until I took control of them. Brown fucked non baby boomers to pour money into the public cash drain. Had I had control of my pension money that would not of happened. Labour basically robbed people's savings to bribe their client voters.

The problem with any public entity is that they have no market, so pricing services becomes impossible. The paper "Economic calculation in a socialist commonwealth " published by Ludwig Von Mises in the 1930s explains why with great clarity. The book "The fatal conceit " by Hayek takes the whole concept further and allows people to properly understand the scientific limitations of state intervention.

Sambostar

Balfour Beatty won the council contract around here to maintain verges, roundabouts, greens etc.  4 months later the grass was three feet high and endangering motorists due to lack of visibility.,  When they finally bought the vans and trained the staff and got around to doing the job they had tendered for, the stuff was left on the ground like hay.  They still don't maintain any parts that are hard to access or not worth breaking a strimmer out for.  This was a big private company that obviously could not pool it's existing resources to get the job done.

Better off cutting out the private shareholders and big bosses and keeping everything in house and changing the law so that council workers cannot take 15 months paid sick leave off and council bosses don't get massive final salary pension schemes.  After all we are all shareholders in the council.

It does make me laugh when academics try and put an affirmative price on things, kind of reminds me of Spon's or something.

The only difference with public sector private contracts is that we all effectively have indirect shareholder stakes in it, but we are excluded from any rewards.  Kind of like the debt based housing market securing pension schemes through various unintelligible securities and derivatives eh Mags.  People buy  ten times over, something which is essentially theirs in the first place anyway.  All whilst the fat is milked off for the few.

Evilmags

Firstly, as a capitalist and not a corporatist I would immediately abolish central banking and nationalised money. You could not have property bubbles in those circumstances. The current debt fueled economy is based on the work of John Maynard Keynes and Paul Krugman. As an Austrian school the main thrust of my current work is educating people so that they understand that econometrics is Pseudoscience.

Economic science is, or should be, based upon human action. The abuse of fractional reserve banking by our masters is outrageous and is state sponsored corporatism at its worst. Real liberty from the economic terrorism inflicted upon people by the government requires a currency they can't manipulate. And that means privatising it.

Sambostar

Well, I agree with you there.  Except maybe that some things can't be measured in money alone.

Evilmags

Sambostar;381503" said:

Well, I agree with you there.  Except maybe that some things can't be measured in money alone.

There is no objective measure of value. Nothing is worth exactly the same to you as it is to me. That is why free, unimpeded interchange is the fundamental bedrock of social cooperation. Money is simply a social institution that evolves like any other. Over many eons it evolved from grain (the story of Joseph and his coat in the bible is a historical example) and settled on gold. It was only when the state left the gold standard and nationalised central banks that you had intervention in money. And given a poundhas lost 98% of its value in less than a century we can see where that is heading.

Just take a minute and think how much cheaper just about everything has become to make. The enormous gains in technology and productivity science gives us every year. Then look at the industrial revolution and the increase in living standards that brought.

No institution on earth, other than the state has the power to stop all of those advances feeding down to society. Yet here we are. 70 years of the state consuming our wealth using the reason and logic free arguments so beloved of Emperorfabulous, Lixarto ect, with ever greater dependency and erosion of liberty. It does not take to much use of reason to see that we should all be much richer.

But because politicians put emotions, sentiment and their own interests above ours, in total negligence of economic science, here we are...

joneve

£115ish a month over the 10 month period; band B I think. Will be more in our new gaff though

Phil_aka_Pip

@Evilmags you're talking blx about privatisation.

If a job takes an hour to do using £x worth of materials how the hell do you think it can cost less for a privatised business to do the same job AND make a profit. The only way it can work is to reduce the hourly rate (not possible legally if the worker is already on the national minimum), cut the amount of materials or the quality of them, or cut the time spent on the job (ie not do it as thoroughly). 

Nitefly

Band B in Wigan, 3 bed semi, £109 per month for 10 months.

We have 4 bins: brown for glass and plastic every 2 weeks, green for garden and food waste every 2 weeks, blue for paper and cardboard every 4 weeks, and black for the rest, every 2 weeks.