I'm assuming the 45k a year Biosphere Officer has gone?
Thing is, now the Greens have finished tarting up the bits of town that their voters live in, and the 20mph signs everyone ignores have dried. perhaps the reduced cash could be spent on Children's Centres in the likes of Whitehawk, rather than middle class parks and designer roundabouts.
To use a phrase that Labour are very familiar with 'There's no money left'.
Expect savage cuts in funding, and to be fair to the new administration, they will struggle to support essential services.
Still, the relief at being able to drive a car at 25mph should ease the pain.
Don't doubt it for a second TBH mate but that doesn't change my opinion that what little the Greens did have was badly spent.
A quick read of post #161 however and I've already saved Fat Warren 45k. I should be a consultant. You should see my day rates.
The sad fact is that, whoever is in power, they have some every unpopular decisions to make about how to spend a dwindling amount of cash on a growing population demanding better services in Brighton and Hove.
If you want to point the finger at 'wasted Green cash' on crazy road schemes, don't forget that the money the councils raises from parking/speeding fines HAS to be spent on the roads. It can't be spent on nursery schools/refuse collection etc.
I'm assuming the 45k a year Biosphere Officer has gone?
The sad fact is that, whoever is in power, they have some every unpopular decisions to make about how to spend a dwindling amount of cash on a growing population demanding better services in Brighton and Hove.
If you want to point the finger at 'wasted Green cash' on crazy road schemes, don't forget that the money the councils raises from parking/speeding fines HAS to be spent on the roads. It can't be spent on nursery schools/refuse collection etc.
A whole party made up of dedicated Green activists and in many cases professional sustainability experts and not one of them could come up with a single idea on how to improve refuse and recycling rates? Our recycling rates and relative position against other councils went backwards.
The Green party has been in existence for decades and should have been like a whirlwind with their first chance at controlling a council in the UK. There should have been all sorts of plans and initiatives all written and ready for action given the experience and make up of the UK Green Party. Instead, they came, they saw, they bickered. They won't get a chance like this again for a long time, I hope they're a darned sight better prepared and more professional next time.
It surely can't be coincidence that the council have not collected the bins this week and there is an election ? FAILED Greens again.
Still, the relief at being able to drive a car at 25mph should ease the pain.
As it stands the council has to make or save £100m to cover the funding gap over the next five years.
The Greens were pretty much refusing to do this, I feel if they had got back in we would have started to have a Militant tendency stand off, like the one that happened between Liverpool council and the Thatcher government.
Both Labour and the Tories have shown they want to support the governments cuts and so support the so called 'Austerity' project.
No the Greens wouldn't - the Green councillors who wanted to do that are in a minority in their own party. The Greens would have implemented the cuts, the Kitkat leadership show no signs of defiance apart from jacking up the council tax, a regressive tax introduced by the Tories.
Will Labour do anything different but implement cuts, probably not. There is no space left to do anything different - except unlawful defiance - because of how local democracy has been strangled by central government diktat by Thatcher/Blair/Cameron.
I heard three women walking their dogs this morning, talking about how wonderful things will be know the Green majority on the council had been cut. When I spoke with them, they genuinely believed that the Labour/Tory council will change back the Lewes Road works, increase all the speed limits back to 30 mph, stop funding LGBT projects and stop all the travellors getting onto Green spaces around Brighton. Lets see what the old school party brigades do for Brighton and Hove and I hope they keep the living wage to council workers and protect council jobs.
Will be interesting how the Labour group also deal with settling the refuse workers wages, something all councils have had to do since the Birmingham ruling to equalise pay between women/men and grades.
Yeah there is some forlorn hope up here at Fiveways that the new Labour administration will reverse the Lewes Road scheme as the displaced traffic now uses Ditchling Road instead. (It's not uncommon now in peak periods for the southbound queue for the Fiveways lights to reach up almost to the reservoir, with the 26 and 46 buses stuck in the traffic). Personally I don't think they'll have the balls. Still now that the execrable Davy is no longer involved (a man too ashamed and embarrassed of his record to stand for re-election) the Council should at least stop lying.
It's the high paid council officers and bureaucracy that strangles local democracy. The councils may change colour but the people who dictate the policies are still in their safe jobs no matter how much of a hash they make of it. The people who really run the council are never held accountable. A prime example is the dilly dallying over the King Alfred leisure centre with the main focus of housing on the site being set in stone no matter what party is in power.