Skip to main content

Budget 2005/6 more details

Our budgetary proposals have been welcomed across the city. People recognise that we are acting on the issues that they are concerned about. They also welcome our movement towards more cost effective governance.

  • More money for Social Care. The budget goes up by 11%, sustantially more than the increase from Central Government.
  • The fourth option for Housing. Birmingham and Cambridge (Lib Dem Run) have both committed to providing the resources for the fourth option.
  • Park Keepers - 1 Park keeper for each district.
  • Bus Wardens - bus patronage has been going down because of difficulties with the service.
  • Kerbside collection for recycling not just paper.
  • More support for Apprentice type training
  • A system to stop the council losing messages
  • More effective action on graffiti, flyposting and dumping.

All in all, a Cleaner, Greener and Safer City than under Labour and with one of the lowest council tax increases in the country at 2.8%.

What we must do, however, is to continue the process of concentrating on cost-effective, front line services. For example decisions need to be taken taken on the basis of value for money not just whether it can be paid for from the budget.

This will enable us to make sure that we do a better job with same resources.

Comments

Popular posts from this blog

Why are babies born young?

Why are babies born young? This sounds like an odd question. People would say "of course babies are born young". However, this goes to the core of the question of human (or animal) development. Why is it that as time passes people develop initially through puberty and then for women through menopause and more generally getting diseases such as sarcopenia, osteoporosis, diabetes and cancer, but most of the time babies start showing no signs of this. Lots of research into this has happened over the years and now I think it is clear why this is. It raises some interesting questions. Biological youth is about how well a cell functions. Cells that are old in a biological sense don't work that well. One of the ways in which cells stop working is they fail to produce the full range of proteins. Generally the proteins that are produced from longer genes stop being produced. The reason for this relates to how the Genes work (the Genome). Because the genome is not gettin