#councils

[vodorokotlc]

how the council is showing off is awesome.

"we've repaired another piece of shit that was destroyed by the Neverseens. Let this be a LESSON to everyone that we are STRONG."

and so it goes every time

guys? I have bad news?

[eldrytchcryptid]

I have survived yet another system that was designed for my oppression.

[probablyasocialecologist]

How the Tories drove British councils into bankruptcy

Councils provide social care, schools and housing. And half of them are about to run out of money

Austerity has been biting since 2010, when George Osborne slashed the amount of money councils could receive from central government in one of his first acts as chancellor. Between 2010 and 2020, they lost more than 50% of their government grants in real terms. Six councils have already gone ‘bankrupt’ in the last two years while more than half of the rest say they could follow, meaning they could be taken over by Whitehall or replaced by new authorities.

[...]

Councils are responsible for 800 different services, including meeting Britain’s soaring demand for social care. They also run schools, public health, housing, planning and licensing. “Everyone thinks that councils [just] collect the bins and fix the roads,” said Revans. “We do so, so much more.” Most council services are mandatory, meaning they must legally be delivered. But others – including leisure centres, pest control, museums, and youth clubs – are discretionary, meaning councils can choose whether to offer them or not.

[...]

When David Cameron and Nick Clegg formed the coalition government in 2010, they declared that: “The time has come to disperse power more widely in Britain today.” A year later, the Localism Act became law, giving councils “the legal capacity to do anything that an individual can do”. In practice, that meant not a lot, because councils continue to be fiscally dependent on Westminster. London, for example, relies on strings-attached central government grants for 68.8% of its funding. New York, by comparison, only depends on central government for 26% of its budget, and Paris just 16.3%. Councils can also generate revenue from council tax and business rates, an equivalent tax on business premises. But the Localism Act prevents councils from raising council tax annually above a cap – which is currently 5% – set by the government.  Austerity, then, has seemingly overridden any attempt at decentralisation. Fourteen years ago, your council could do a lot more for you, especially if you were in a tight spot. But year after year, it has pared back what it offers to the point that some campaigners fear residents expect less in the first place.

[twitterexile]

[susibis]

Be an empath for you first

[feckcops]

Private companies are stealing public parks

Private Companies Are Stealing Public Parks | Novara Media

Across London, cash-strapped councils are signing away people’s gardens to entertainment mega-corporations – forcing small community groups

“For years now, entertainment mega-corporations have targeted cash-strapped councils as amenable, affordable hosts for their events. From Clapham Common to Glasgow Green, city-dwellers across the UK have become accustomed to basslines vibrating their windows, five-metre fences encircling their playgrounds, and security guards policing what are effectively their gardens.

“Yet as entertainment companies try to recuperate massive pandemic losses with aggressive multi-year deals, while the climate crisis renders urban summers increasingly unbearable, the privatisation of public parkland is becoming harder to swallow.

“In April, dozens of Haringey residents descended on FoFP’s biggest-ever meeting to vent their frustrations, while a recent petition demanding private companies keep their hands off Finsbury Park was signed by thousands ... For the most part, the work of groups like FoFP and FCC is polite engagement with the council to ensure the park is properly maintained. Yet as councils’ approach to major events has become more aggressive, so have the friends groups’.

“In 2016, FoFP took Haringey to court over its outdoor events policy. The group lost the case – though it did win an agreement from Haringey that the money made from the park would be spent on it. Haringey claims to have done this, though to FoFP, the numbers don’t quite add up: while in information obtained by Novara Media via an FoI request, the council claims it spent £871,626 on staffing Finsbury Park in 2020-21, many have questioned where the money is going: the park has had no park ranger since late October, no on-site manager since May. ‘If you’ve got this money […] you sure as hell didn’t spend it here,’ says Simon, pointing to the chipped paint of the bench on which she’s sitting.”

[reformedontheweb]

"Reformed theology is not only systematic but also 'catholic,' sharing much in common with other communions that are part of historic Christianity. The sixteenth-century Reformers were not interested in creating a new religion. They were interested, not in innovation, but in renovation. They were reformers, not revolutionaries. Just as the Old Testament prophets did not repudiate the original covenant God had made with Israel, seeking instead to correct the departures from revealed faith, so the Reformers called the church back to its apostolic and biblical roots.

Though the Reformers rejected church tradition as a source of divine revelation, they did not thereby despise the entire scope of Christian tradition. John Calvin and Martin Luther frequently quoted the Church Fathers, especially Augustine. They believed the church had learned much in her history, and they wished to conserve what was true in that tradition. For example, the Reformers embraced the doctrines articulated and formulated by the great ecumenical councils of church history, including the doctrines of the Trinity and of Christ's person and work formulated at the councils of Nicea in 325 and of Chalcedon in 451."

R. C. Sproul- What is Reformed Theology, published by Baker Books, P. O. Box 6287, Grand Rapids, MI., pgs. 28-29.