Malanimal

In areas with low income there might be fewer people who use libraries, but having them there as a service for those who do benefits us all. Libraries, swimming pools, public spaces - these are investments that help neighbourhoods function and encourage the best in people - supporting those who want to do good. Of course, combining them with meeting spaces, cafes, services can help cut costs. And if I go private for my dentist but you go to an NHS one - why should I pay for your dental care? If I pay for my housing and you cannot afford yours - why should I pay for your housing? If I like playing video games all day and you like taking a walk through a well maintained park - why should I pay for it to be maintained? There is no end to that argument - what you think should be "pay as you go" is unlikely to be what I think should be "pay as you go". In the end we'd have to put everything in the pot - and spend an age deciding how much each bit should get.

And I probably pay for something you get benefit out of but I don't. If everything is privatised then it's just the money that talks - and I don't think that is fair unless the wages and profits are shared out much more equally than now. The alternative is drawing up a list and spending half our lives arguing over which bit of the Council gets what money. So it's best to elect representatives to do it for us. Of course, the representatives I want might not be the ones you want...

Say £30 council tax increase for the whole year, of which saving Libraries is just a part. We borrow about ten books every month (mostly kids books). So that's one hundred and twenty books a year. I'm a fan of second hand books, but I'd be struggling to get even half that number for £30.

Problem is "it's not that easy" . For small amounts of council tax you would be taking people all the way through the courts, paying baliffs, etc. That's if they haven't moved to another area of the country - tracking them down using agencies and sharing info with other councils. How much does that cost? Pretty soon you are spending as much money chasing people down as you would get back from them. For example, one bloke owed £45 and got sent a council summons that cost £48 to send. What's the point of that? There do seem to be improvements that could be made - a lot of the folks dragged to court last year wondered why they hadn't just been rung up and offered a payment plan

None of the commissioners got paid. The people who gave evidence were paid expenses I'd imagine. The meetings were held in Council owned venues or at The Circle (Voluntary Action Sheffield). I've got a figure of £20k in my head for how much it all cost but don't know how reliable that is. Anways, the £1 million pot was in addition to any expense on the commission - so it should all be still there.

In theory, the repercussions should be felt through the ballot box... it is councillors who have oversight of large expenditure. I thought it had potential - just wasn't done right and I've got no faith in where it might end up. However, £1 million will just keep the libraries going for one more year then the money is gone. Raising Council Tax means the money will be there to support the libraries as long as needed. ---------- Post added 26-02-2014 at 14:22 ---------- The report is on the Council's website. From what I have heard, there will be an announcement in March about what they are thinking of spending the money on.

They haven't spent the £1 million yet. The commission itself didn't cost much and council officers along with councillors are now deciding how to spend the £1 million to meet the recommendations of the commission. I never said the council were quick... One problem is that one person's disgraceful waste is another's good idea. Some people think spending money on libraries would be a waste, others do not. The council's job is to find a way through. Another problem is that what seems like waste can sometimes save money. Although some consultants are a waste of space, others really do save the council money. Spending money doing up buildings makes sense if it cuts future repair bills. And finally - some money will be wasted. No matter how much people try to give a good service and make sure money is used well - there will be things that don't work, things that go wrong. Sometimes people at the council make stupid decisions (look at the "Digital Region" project - £11 million down the pan for a scheme that anyone with an iota of knowledge about the market knew was a turkey). But a lot of the time they do alright - no worse than anyone else anyhow. The cuts have got rid of a lot of the fat and more. Without changing some things at the core of how the Council works - like how the council devolves responsibility and treats risk - I don't think much more could be saved. The council tax increase would go directly towards supporting services and people on the front line - worth it I think.

That includes the tax collected on behalf of the police and fire service. The 2.95% increase relates only to the Council part of that, which is £855.16 per year for a Band A household. A 2.95% increase is £25.23, or just under 50p a week. Yup - 59% in 2011 - see here. There's quite a nice summary of the differences across the city in the Tale of Two Cities report by Danny Dorling... Council tax Band A properties as a % of total (2007) Attercliffe 61.6% Brightside 89.2% Central 71.2% Hallam 18.7% Heeley 67.6% Hillsborough 48.7% ---------- Post added 26-02-2014 at 10:41 ---------- £400 million is passed direct to schools and £190m goes on housing benefit. £73m goes in paying off debts. That leaves £740m for actually spending on services. Raising another £3.5m would mean 0.5% more - not much, but enough to do good things with. It would take just £900k to keep the libraries full staffed and open, whilst giving community groups and the library service more time to work out a plan that could see a decent service across the city supported with less money. That would be achieving something. The adult care services are under more demand. Staff are on zero-hours minimum wage contracts. Care packages are being cut to and into the bone. We can support the quality of life both for the most vulnerable and those who care for them, at a time when that quality of life is being cut. That would be achieving something.

The Greens are proposing not to increase Council Tax by any amount if the referendum is lost, effectively freezing it. However, it is not clear from Government statements if any of the freeze grant can then be claimed. The extra funding would support the 30k households who get some Council Tax Benefit support. There will be some households who don't qualify for Council Tax Benefit support but are still in poverty - it is difficult to target support to everyone who needs it.

Echo that, the chips are good and the portions are huge - if you order a large chips you get enough to feed a family of four. For a week.

On the question of what UK Uncut would actually like. I can't speak for an autonomous and independent network , but there is plenty of room to tighten up tax loopholes, not give tax breaks to banks, limit bonuses paid in publicly owned banks and place a higher tax on bonuses. There's another protest this Saturday at 11am, meeting at the Royal Bank of Scotland (which is closed), then moving onto NatWest (which isn't). RBS owns NatWest, so it's the same thing really. If you're interested see http://www.facebook.com/event.php?eid=165480703501368 or http://ukuncut.org.uk/actions/380 and details of why here: http://ukuncut.org.uk/targets/banks/rbs-natwest A feature of the Sheffield protests so far seems to be the lovely (?!) singing, of which there is promised to be more. More fun than your average demo!

It's not exactly unprecedented in a recession... "The proportion of the working-age population in employment increased to a peak of 74.9 per cent in 1990, falling subsequently to 70.5 per cent in 1993 during the recession. The proportion in employment then rose to 72.9 per cent in 1997 (the baseline year) and continued to rise to 75.0 per cent in 2004. Since then, there has been a slight decrease in the employment rate to 74.6 per cent in 2006." (from here) The reason so few young people are in work is because there is no money in the system to employ them. People who are disabled struggle to get positions because businesses do not provide flexible working. Society places financial success above building communities and relationships. The common cause is an economy that pays the top 20% seven times more than the poorest, the top 10% one hundred times more. You can't have that kind of inequality and not have effects across society that harm everyone - the money could be used within businesses to hire more people and have more flexibility - or used across society to stimulate more growth. If you want to look for a solution, don't cut help to the most vulnerable. Look to those who have the money and power and get them to share more of what they have, or not take it in the first place.

Well it's kind of understandable if you take into account that "people of working age (aged 16 to 64 for males and 16 to 59 for females) represent 62 per cent of the total mid-2009 population" http://www.statistics.gov.uk/cci/nugget.asp?id=6 So the total number of people that *could* be employed is around 38 million, of whom three-quarters work, or 3 out of 4. The quarter includes people who are disabled and can't work, housewives, new mums, carers, and so on. You are technically correct that only 1 in 2 people in the country work, but saying that ignores half of the rest who have either already worked a lifetime or are just relying on mum and dad... The 1 in 6 figure also includes those people outside working age: There are over ten million people with a limiting long term illness, impairment or disability in the UK; In the UK, the most commonly-reported impairments are those that affect mobility, lifting or carrying; The prevalence of disability rises with age. Around one in 20 children are disabled, compared to around one in seven working age adults and almost one in two people over state-pension age. (from here) I'm not denying that some people on whatever benefit seem to be getting a good deal, and there are those that swing the lead, but like all folk who do bad, they are in the minority. There are a silent majority of people with disabilities for whom life is a struggle and, rather than helping them properly, the system of benefits sometimes seems designed to kick them whilst they are down. It can be inflexible, oppressive, and demeaning. Therefore, cutting back without reform is either plain ignorant or inhuman.

Your money and your life? Closing the health gap in Sheffield 7pm Thursday 21st October at Sheffield Cathedral Chaired by the Sheffield Equality Group, this meeting will discuss closing the health gap in Sheffield with two leading writers on health in the City: Dr Jeremy Wight, Director of Public Health in Sheffield; and, Danny Dorling, professor of Human Geography at the University of Sheffield. While investment in public health has improved overall health, it has not reduced the health gap between better off areas and poorer ones. A key question for speakers will be around what policy or policies will act best to close the health gap when so many have apparently failed. The meeting will encourage discussion and questions from the audience. Jeremy Wight has worked in the NHS in Sheffield and Yorkshire since 1985, initially in hospital medicine including kidney disease, and since 1992 in public health. In 2006 he was appointed Director of Public Health for the (newly formed) Sheffield PCT, jointly appointed with the City Council. Jeremy is also an honorary Senior Lecturer in Public Health Medicine at ScHARR, University of Sheffield. He is responsible for leading on public health in the city, where health inequality is an "overriding public health concern", and a key focus of the strategic plans on public health in the city. Danny Dorling has been a professor of Human Geography at the University of Sheffield since 2003 and is a leading writer and speaker on social structures and inequalities. "Politicians usually say they want a fairer society. They may mean it. Only by looking at what has happened during their time in power can we tell if they have achieved it. Few argue that a fairer society should see inequalities in health rising. In this talk I'll look at what the last government achieved in terms of health inequalities and what the preferences of the current government appear to be". Admission free, donations welcome For more details, please see http://wp.me/p124sa-2B or phone 07956 384142

The group is non-party political, and looks to engage any mainstream political party as well as Sheffield First, the public, etc. In a pre-election question to prospective MPs in Sheffield we got positive responses from all three main parties. I think the issues around pay inequality are recognised to an extent by members of political parties across the spectrum, but the practical policies that might be implemented are very different. One Society and Demos came up with proposals for Conservatives, Labour, and Lib Dems that each party could take up to reduce income inequality. It's clear from the forwards that the aims sit better with some political ideologies and policies than others.