11 August 2008

Tra la la



You might have thought that by now they would know what they wanted to do about local government finance. It is not so long ago that the Burt Report's recommendations were jettisoned by Scottish Labour in favour of (very) modest changes to the council tax (which they never got round to implementing). Then the Scottish Government (as we must learn to call it) produced its proposals for a local income tax. If the Labour Party did not approve of LIT (which they did not - for very good reasons), you might have thought they would have settled on a robust alternative. Alas, what they settled on was far from robust.

So we now have a situation where all three of the leadership candidates have pronounced themselves dissatisfied with the existing council tax, but none of them appears to have a clear idea what to do about it (other than more reviews, of course, and more consultation, equally of course).

If I were a member of the party, I would be in despair.

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