UK Politics

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One by one, England’s councils are going bankrupt – and nobody in Westminster wants to talk about it (www.theguardian.com)

submitted 10 months ago by Patch to c/uk_politics

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[–] mannycalavera 11 points 10 months ago (2 children)

Our local council will probably be one of those. They spent the last decade investing in:

A failed concert arena.
A failed energy company.
Another failed concert arena.
A city poet.

Obviously the Tories forced them to do this by cutting their budget or something 🤷. Whilst simultaneously:

Not building enough social housing.
Not doing basic checks on existing council structures.
Closing libraries.
Shutting down public toilets.
Reducing bin services.
Having public fights with the region's mayor (they both belong to the same party funnily enough).
Literally banning local democracy news reporters from council meetings for asking "the wrong sort of questions".

For sure the Tories are to blame for a lot of stuff, but there's a huge arrogance in a lot of councils that are quite frankly shite at their jobs but in it purely for the payday. Everyone else be damned. We'll have to pick up the pieces just like we did the bankers, and just like the bankers they'll get away with it.

[–] GreatAlbatross 11 points 10 months ago

Councils were strongly encouraged to borrow money to invest, with the strong hint to them that investments that returned profit would be able to replace government shortfalls.
Some councils did it because they were backed into a corner, others were led by impossibly shit idiots.

But the outcome is, a large number of those investments did not pay off, and those councils are now faced with failed investments, the bill, and still not having enough because of the cuts.

[–] thehatfox@lemmy.world 5 points 10 months ago

There is a growing a problem with awareness and accountability of local governance, and I think a lot of it has been caused by the decline of local journalism. Local residents now have little to no real knowledge of what is happening in local councils, at every level, because there is so few places it is reported. An uninformed electrocute can't make informed decisions at local elections, and a such the rot begins to set in.

My own area used to have multiple local newspapers, magazines and radio stations. Now there is only one paper standing, and a couple of "zombie" outlets bought out by media megacorps that are technically still standing but outputting nothing but advertising and syndicated fluff pieces with no local connection.

The BBC are continuing to make cuts to their own local news coverage also which will only worsen the problem.