Council strike action - do you think they will provide rebates?

The admittedly wickedly-radical idea occurs to me that if council employees are to conduct a series of regular strikes to improve their pay, we council tax payers should receive some kind of rebate for the periods when the council is not providing us with the services we pay them to provide. There's more detail about the services which will be curtailed all over Scotland here and in the Highland Council region here; a summary of the effects on council service in Highland Council region is given on the main page:

Industrial Action Services provided by The Highland Council will be disrupted on Wednesday 24 September as the result of industrial action, which is part of nationwide action by Unite the Union, GMB and Unison members in respect of the National Pay Award. The Council will endeavour to keep disruption to a minimum.

For comparision, I use a number of services for which I pay by subscription, provided by commercial organisations. It is invariably the case that when these services are curtailed for whatever reason, technical problems or industrial action for example, that there will be a 'rebate' in the form of an extension of the period of my subscriptions to cover the period when services were not being provided, without me having to ask for this. I've never heard of a government or council, anywhere, which takes it responsibilities for providing services equally seriously, have you?

An interesting tax proposal from the SNP ...

... what do others think? The SNP is proposing to abolish Council Tax and replace it with a 3p hike in income tax rates, already provided for in the Scotland Act which set up devolved government in Scotland. The SNP say all but 10 per cent of 'top earners' would pay less tax, but that the new method would result in a reduction of GBP450m when compared with the current Council Tax, to be made up by grants to Councils from the Scottish Executive.

I'd want to see a proper independent analysis of the financial implications of these proposals, or publication of full details of the independent study the SNP says it has commissioned. I'd also like to know where the Scottish Executive is to source the additional GBP450m it says will be required to compensate Councils. Apart from that I'm not opposed in principle to the idea - except of course that I want to see government activity and the tax required to fund it reduced overall; it seems increasingly clear that their proposal to reduce the number of departments in the Scottish (which I wrote about here) is NOT designed with this in mind, but is instead desgined to concentrate the same or increased power in fewer hands - and this proposal to tie Councils even more closely to central government ('Scottish Executive' that is) funding than at present will make that aspect of the situation even worse than at present. There are also major imbalances in population density in different parts of Scotland (e.g. Glasgow and Strathclyde, as compared with the Highlands) which would seem to imply that there would be much greater deficits to fund, when compared with Council Tax, in low population density areas such as the Highlands than there are even now. So whilst as I say I am not opposed in principle to the SNP idea I do believe it needs to be subjected to the most intense independent appraisal so that the full implications are worked out in advance.

Another Scottish Council announces below-inflation rise in Council Tax

(Please see UPDATES at end)

This time it is Stirling, which has announced an increase of 1.8 per cent in its Council Tax rates for the coming tax year. Naturally this, together with the claimed "difficult" policy-related savings amounting to £2m, will have nothing whatsoever to do with the upcoming Scottish Parliament and Council elections if you believe the announcements. Ahem.

I have written earlier about similar recent below-inflation increases in Council Tax in respect of Renfrewshire and the Borders.

Does anyone think that next year's increases will be similarly low, when there is no election due?

UPDATE: (Thursday 8FEB07 17.20 CET) Since I wrote this I have discovered another article (again from the BBC) which have fuller details of Council Tax increases across Scotoland. It seems that the increases this year are the lowest since 1993. My own Council, Highland Council, has announced an increase of 2.5 per cent; naturally I have no objection to a 'low' increase, just the cynicism of this maneouvre by Councils in the year when elections are being held, specially when the general rate of inflation in the economy has been edging up, not down, for several quarters.

2nd UPDATE: (Thursday 8FEB07 23.45 CET) It seems that the average increase in Council Tax rates across Scotland is 1.9 per cent, considerably lower than inflation; my suspicion is that this is a deliberate move to fool the voters (as happens every 4 years) before the upcoming Local Council and Scottish Parliament elections.

Scottish pre-election fix, mark two

Another Scottish Council, Renfrewshire this time, has set an unusually low level of increase in Council Tax for the tax year beginning April 2007; happily (and I'm sure there is no coincidence) just in time for the Scottish Parliament elections due in May this year.

I already wrote about the recent announcement of an astonishingly low rise in Council Tax by Border's Council here.

These Councils are quite shameless!

Low Council Tax rise - upcoming Scottish Parliament elction. Coincidence? Hardly!

And so the political charade in Scotland takes the course it last took in the run-up to the last elections for the Scottish Parliament in 2003 if my memory is accurate. Scottish Border's Council has announced its 'lowest ever' increase in Council Tax of only 1.9 per cent. In fact I recall the same pattern of low Council Tax increases before the 1999 and 1995 local council elections, too. Quite obviously our policiticans take the electorate for complete fools, being fully aware that they will simply be grateful for one year's respite (relatively speaking) from the inexorable rise in Council Taxes, knowing full well that this year's 'generosity' will be more than recouped the following year with probable swingeing increases, the next elections being a safe three and half years away by that time.