The National Liberal Club was awash with LibDems this evening, some for the Haringey local party's annual dinner (at whose pre-dinner drinks Nick Clegg appeared and answered questions), others for the Thank You party for London Region's longstanding Administrator, Flick Rea, who retired at the end of June — and a few, like myself, who were ...
It's only a few blog entries away, but on the 12th August I wrote that the words from the Police Complaints Commission that they "may have misled journalists" struck me as a cause for concern. the subject was the death of Mark Duggan. Today on the news I hear that Mark's family has no trust in the IPCC's investigation but at least the IPCC admit that they misled journalists (not that they may have misled). Now the blame lies with the Police Complaints Commission and not with the journalists so it is no wonder the family can't trust this organisation. ...
We've just had confirmation from South Glos that the bus shelter is now on order, and that it will be the larger (7 bay) version. The delivery date is expected to be in the next 6 to 7 weeks with installation then likely to take around a week, but the dates are subject to confirmation - we'll let you know as soon as we hear. The shelter is of the "Gullwing" design with full side panels on all sides (except entry/exit points) and roof as we've previously mentioned. It will include seating with arm rests within the shelter along with ...
The East Midlands' largest street theatre festival takes place in Welland Park, Market Harborough, tomorrow, Saturday and Sunday, with a big top show, an enchanted evening promenade, talking statues and much else. See the Arts Fresco website for full details. Hazel Cook, the festival's director, wrote a guest post looking forward to the event a few weeks ago.
Lib Dem NHS activists take heart from extent of Parliamentary rebellion as new analysis shows "two-thirds of MPs" withhold support from Government on health bill. Liberal Democrat activists and Parliamentarians seeking to amend the Health Bill today released an analysis of the ... Continue reading →
With Margaret Ritchie tonight announcing that she will step down as leader of the SDLP and not put her name forward in the forthcoming leadership election, the obvious question is "Who next?" He stepping aside frees up her loyal lieutenants much in the same way that another leader called Margaret did, despite her topping the first poll in a leadership contest. So who are those lieutenants who might stand in her place against the challenge of Patsy McGlone. The obvious first option of someone who is freed up is Alasdair McDonnell the MP and MLA for Belfast South, who came ...
Portland Communications has launched an App that has the contact details of politicians and journalists. For PR and public affairs professionals this is an incredibly handy tool. While most people subscribe to paid for databases, this is free and is mobile. There is an iPhone and iPad version. You can download it by clicking this link.
Via the BBC: The Lib Dems urged elections for police commissioners to be delayed partly to help the electoral prospects of their local councillors, the BBC understands. The elections were due to take place on 3 May 2012, the same day as council polls across England and Wales, but are set to be put back until November. A senior Lib Dem spokesman told BBC News their councillors wanted to "depoliticise" the vote. Labour, which is against elected police chiefs, claims the move will cost £25m. The issue was the subject of a spat at Prime Minister's Questions, with opposition leader ...
On the 18th September Stockport Farmers' Market will be hosting The International Food Festival at Stockport Market The mayor will open the event and there will be live cookery demonstrations from celebrity chef Mike Harrison and the Thai restaurant Chilli Banana. Several charities are involved in the markets including The Christie, Rainbow Trust, St Francis house and Erin Hounds. There will also be over fifty stalls, a food marquee selling food to eat at the event, a mini funfair, a menagerie of animals including miniature Shetland ponies, owls and hounds. International Food Festival
The local Lib Dem team are working to get The Weavers in Cheadle looking better. It may be that a buyer is found soon and the unit opens as something new – that would be ideal. But if that doesn't happen, we've identified some money available from the Council which can be used to improve the look of vacant premises – if the owner's willing to put in a bit themselves to match it. We're now working with the agents to see if we can get it sorted. We're having to move quickly as the money's limited and it'll go ...
There has been much coverage by the media of a letter to the FT by 20 high-profile economists urging the government to drop the 50p tax rate which applies to incomes over £150,000 and is paid by around 310,000 people. The economists say the higher rate is doing "lasting damage" to the UK economy, makes the UK ...
Is it any wonder why MP's get a bad name when they behave the way they do in the House of Commons? Quite honestly you can see exactly why people are so fed up with their elected members if this ...
Thu 8th
20:00
Day 3882: TORCHWOOD: Middling Day: The One Where It Turns Out You Needn't Have Watched the Last Thre...
Thursday: So, why didn't Jack just go straight to PhiCorp Chief Operating Officer Winston Zeddemore the moment they discovered PhiCorp were ready for the miracle with their stockpile of painkillers? We could have stuck this one rather good scene with Ernie Hudson at the end of episode three, sparing us the clichéd "let's download all of PhiCorp's secrets from Jilly Kitsinger's computer" shtick and cut straight to the good stuff (no, not the bonking... well, not just the bonking...) in next week's episode. And, as a bonus, not gotten Dr Vera involved in the silly spy plot and hence incinerated. ...
Thu 8th
19:12
Blood donations to be accepted from gay men, a step in the right direction, but nothing more.
I've seen tweets going around that the "gay blood ban" is being lifted. This isn't strictly the case. From November, gay men who have not been sexually active for 12 months will be permitted to donate. This is good news, ... Continue reading →
When Willie Rennie tweeted this morning asking for question suggestions, the subject I suggested was children's rights and services. The Scottish Government has today launched a consultation on a new Children's Rights Bill. This will form the basis of a new Children's Services Bill in 2013. This is a real opportunity for Scotland and its politicians to work together to really make life better for children. The range of subjects this could and should cover is enormous. Let's look at some examples. if we're serious about adhering to the principles of the United Nations Convention on the Rights of the ...
Jason Holmes has a very good piece about Howard Jacobson over on Huffington Post. I like the bit about rabbis and Chitty Chitty Bang Bang and am particularly delighted by the suggestion that JG Ballard deserves to be bracketed with Ben Elton. You can just imagine what delight The Finkler Question gave to someone in my position and this is a great interview with Jacobson. I like his saying: "When I was younger I was always trying desperately to be a novelist in my head, but I never wrote anything until...I was 40. I wanted to write, but couldn't. I ...
I read with interest the comments of the Alamein councillors on the possibility of a further 360 houses at East Anton. The three have continually championed development in the area, claiming credit for every new stage and turning up for every photo opportunity. Why the sudden change of heart? Extra houses in the area have always been a possibility, particularly on the secondary school site. Mrs. Whiteley, as vice-chair of the Planning Committee, is well aware of this. The arguments these councillors now put forward against the extra 360 houses apply equally to the already-approved 2500. And they ignored every ...
I do not share her politics - and a former leading light of the Oxford University Light Entertainment Society turned socialist journalist still sounds to me like the sort of girl Bertie Wooster spent his time trying not to get engaged to - but I am glad to see Laurie Penny's Penny Red at the top of the Wikio UK political blog rankings. For some time now we have been living in the age of the group blog, so it is good to see an individual blog back in first place. Penny Red is better written than some that have ...
Few things on the internet are as frustrating as a broken link to something you would like to read. This sad fate has befallen many of Nick Clegg's early speeches, so I thought I could provide a useful service by ... Continue reading →
Speech by Nick Clegg at the Liberal Democrats' Manifesto Conference, 12 January 2008 Today is a crucial step in the creation of a new liberal manifesto for Britain. Gordon Brown's bottling of the autumn election has handed us a tremendous ... Continue reading →
Had the pleasure of being contacted by the Debating Europe think thank. The founders would like to promote, to our readership, a platform (backed by the European Parliament) to discuss the possible foundation of a Federal Europe. You can join the discussion at At some point, in the short to medium term, I will ...
Thu 8th
16:31
Willie Rennie asks Alex Salmond to implement recommendations on ending lifetime gay men blood donati...
It was the first First Minister's Questions of the new parliamentary session today. Scottish Liberal Democrat leader Willie Rennie had asked on Twitter earlier in the day for suggestions for questions. He decided to ask the following: About an hour go the UK Government's Advisory Committee on the Safety of Blood, Tissues and Organs recommended that the lifetime ban on gay men donating blood should be rescinded. What will the FM do in Scotland to respond to the report? Alex Salmond confirmed that the Scottish Government would be accepting the recommendations with the protections the committee suggested be put in ...
The House resumed this week and there has been plenty to do. Monday I sat in on Report stage of the Localism Bill and made speeches on two separate amendments about homelessness, about the Dale Farm evictions that begin on September 19. On the first, the Minister Joan Hanham said she wasn't going to discuss an individual case, and on the second, when I pointed out that it was an illustration of a general problem affecting all Gypsies and Travellers living on unauthorised sites, she answered as if I had asked a completely differenrt question. More from my friend MG, ...
As the Localism Bill moves into Report stage in the Lords, local authorities are getting ever closer to gaining their much discussed General Power of Competence (GPoC). For Lib Dems the passage of the Localism Bill is an interesting moment. Many, one suspects, might echo the views of former Lib Dem LGA leader Cllr Richard Kemp who in January blogged his 'support [for] about 80% of the Bill, like[d] the direction but have concerns about the deliverability of 15% of the Bill, and actively detest 5% of it.' Though Kemp's reservations were reserved for the provisions concerning elected mayors, Lib ...
The "facts" as we keep being alluded to, show that in Europe, heterosexual transmission of HIV had higher numbers than homosexual numbers. In the UK, in 2011 there was just a difference between heterosexual and homosexual transmission numbers of 40 persons and that for the last 5 years, the difference has been only 4%, with 4 of those 5 years having higher numbers of transmission in heterosexual people (often by a large degree of difference). Whilst some may argue that for the current year it's higher for homosexual numbers, why were there no higher stringent conditions for heterosexual people during ...
Chewed my way through the second volume of this year's winner of both Hugo and Nebula awards for Best Novel (having read the first half in June). It is a mild improvement on the first volume, in that there are actual signs of plot around page 400 and again around page 600. But the tone is wearyingly sentimental as ever, and the characters just dull apart from the two cheeky kids; and in the end, if the time continuum is going to respond to time travellers in such a way as to preserve History As We Know It - and ...
Moving the income tax threshold to £12,500 is a sensible idea. If the government is to tackle welfare dependency, and desiring to make work pay, then removing minimum wage workers from income taxation is welcomed. Most likely, it will feature in this Parliament because fiscal conservatives will welcome and actively support low to middle income ...
Following a brief recent history of the national Social Liberal Forum from Kat Dadswell, John Commons, the Chair of the Manchester party, spoke on why he felt that Social Liberalism and by extension the Social Liberal Forum were particularly needed ... Continue reading →
I sniggered at the news that London's Comedy Theatre is to be re-named the Pinter Theatre. When this was first mooted some years ago, was Tom Stoppard not quoted as saying: "Wouldn't it be simpler for Harold to change his name to Harold Comedy?" I have fond memories of once interviewing Tom Stoppard for Isis, on which occasion he said: "One of the great deficiencies in life is the lack of a typeface for irony." He got that right. I'm more of a Stoppard fan than a Pinter man. Actually, for all of Pinter's undoubted, enormous stature as a playwright, ...
It's a grim time for supporters of the Euro project like me. Hardly a day goes by without hearing some highly patronizing person going on about how a country fixing its exchange rate is a terrible idea because it can't then devalue when it hits trouble, and how the austerity policies in the Euro zone are doomed to fail. One irony is that many of these people are from the the political right; the sort of people who think that the Thatcher revolution of the 1980s was not just a good thing, but a turning point for the British economy. ...
[IMG: PollySignature] Polly Toynbee President, British Humanist Association
So the government's Advisory Committee on the Safety of Blood has decided that men who have not had sex with other men can give blood after 12 months. This brings them into line with the rule on women who have had sex with men who have had sex with other men (of course that depends if they are aware that a men they have slept with was bisexual). However, such a rule change is still discriminatory. There is still an exclusion on monogamous homosexuals who are in long term relationships, while promiscuous heterosexuals are allowed to give blood. Also the ...
A letter appeared in the FT today from a deficit* of economists which suggested that the 50p tax rate be dropped. Their reasoning, as was stated on yesterday morning's Radio4 Today programme is that hedge funds are relocating to Switzerland in favour of the cheaper tax. While I assume if the tax was dropped the 0.5% of the population in the UK who actually pay that level wouldn't contemplate leaving? Having worked with hedge funds I recognised a few of the names, such as Sushil Wadhwani, listed in the BBC article as former Monetary Policy Committee (MPC) member. In other ...
Tomorrow sees the opening match of the 2011 Rugby World Cup. I can't really believe how quickly the past 4 years have flown but here we are awaiting a feast of sport - and all in the early hours of the morning! If Wales qualify for the quarter-finals (particularly after the shambles of 1991, 1995 and particularly 2007) I'll be content. But time will tell. I also decided to join a sweepstake for the event. Having won a handsome £28 in the football World Cup sweepstake last year when Spain came out victorious I felt it worth having another punt. ...
On Saturday, The Observer reported that Nick Clegg had defeated a bid by Michael Gove to let free schools make profits in the state sector in what the Observer described as "a massive ideological battle over the coalition's education policy." Gove apparently hoped that a shift in education policy during a second-term Conservative administation would allow profit-making providers to deliver state-funded education. The Liberal Democrat deputy prime minister trumpeted his success as one of three victories over Gove in a speech on Monday. His other victories include a guarantee that the next wave of free schools will be set up ...
Thu 8th
12:53
10th September 2001 - Was the Bush administration looking around for things on which to declare war?
[IMG: President George W Bush in India] [IMG: Creative Commons License] photo credit: U.S. Embassy New Delhi I have written before about the stupidity of George W Bush's phrase "War on terror". It's like a "War on Blancmange". – 'Nuff said. But an interesting historical perspective gives us some insight into the background behind that phrase. Hina Shamsi has a Guardian Comment is Free article on the subject. A commenter called Silvertown has written underneath: It seems strange but in a TV programme on 'The Day Before 9/11 currently being aired President Bush is shown announcing 'A War on Illiteracy ...
Thu 8th
12:45
You've put a TEA PARTY AD and a commercial for A TRADE UNION on your blog? ARE YOU MAD???
Goodness, you're thinking, he's gone barmy. He's put a Tea Party commercial up on his blog. What CAN he be thinking... Well, lets first up make clear that I don't agree with the message of this ad. But I think it leads to some interesting observations. So take a gander and then I'll explain... Now, first off, this is fairly typical Tea Party fare. It puts tax firmly at the root of all evil, ignoring any other factors such as (I'm plucking something from the air here...) 8 years of financial mismanagement under the Bush administration. So none of us ...
Yesterday saw the attempt by the Conservative MP for Mid Bedfordshire, Nadine Dorries, to amend the NHS bill to change the legal basis by which women seeking an abortion receive advice and counselling. Now this is not area where I would claim to have a great deal of knowledge, but I know a piece of bad legislation when I see it. This extremely controversial amendment had united woman's rights groups, the medical profession, and many others in opposition to it. It seemed to be based on the assumption that the current system is failing and those involved in it where ...
Danny Alexander MP has argued in an interview in this week's New Statesman magazine that he would like to "push further" eventually on raising the income tax threshold higher than the planned £10,000. Here's an excerpt from the interview, published in the Staggers: From the Treasury perspective, the main Lib Dem contribution to government has been the plan to raise the income-tax threshold to £10,000 by the end of the parliament. Alexander is very attached to this policy as a way of compensating people on low incomes for the cuts. "I think it's a direction that we will want to ...
Thu 8th
12:03
My letter in the Financial Times - deficit reduction and tax cuts for the low paid must be the chanc...
I have the following letter published in today's Financial Times in response to yesterday's arguing for the abolition of the 50p rate of income tax: Sir, To govern effectively, politicians must have priorities. Of the thousands of changes that the ... Continue reading →
A follow-up to my earlier quote that did not make me think of a Liberal Democrat MP, oh no. Here is another one from American Senator Lamar Alexander, which this time does not make me think of any former Liberal Democrat MP: Before playing a harmonica in public, think about how it will look on TV. You too, I am sure, will not have thought of anyone whilst reading that.
I hate to admit it, but I'm beginning to really value her contribution to politics: she's rapidly becoming the best advert for the coalition since Norman Tebbit and also far more adept at highlighting Liberal Democrat influence at the heart of government than most of our own ministers. It really is hard to dislike someone who is so effectively, if inadvertently, fighting our corner. At yesterday's Prime Minister's Questions, Dorries cut a pathetic figure as she unwisely attempted to undermine Deputy Prime Minister Nick Clegg. Dorries asked David Cameron ""The Liberal Democrats make up 8.7% of this parliament and yet ...
First of all, it's not a gay blood donation ban! No, I'm not ranting about Trans exclusion this time, but a wider issue – it banned bisexual men too, but lesbians are OK. It's a ban on donations from men who have had sex with men. Or MSM, for short, because that's a bit of a mouthful. The reasons for the old rules were that men who have sex with other men are at a slightly higher risk for HIV. And yet other significantly higher risk groups, such as anyone engaging in unprotected sex with multiple partners or who comes ...
Clearly temperance has not reached all parts of Swedish society, as this story of a moose on the juice demonstrates.All captions and puns gratefully received.
Long-time readers will know that I've often criticised the widespread practice of local authority Chief Executives pocketing extra payments for running elections, even though most of the work is done by others, they are already well paid and everyone knows that the work they do is part of the job. It's even worse that such payments were increased ahead of the 2010 general election despite no-one first checking how much the pay increase would end up costing, that the payments are not just a one-off but also bump up people's pension entitlements and – with the exception of the referendum ...
This really is as gripping and un-put-downable as they say; a brilliant detective story set in contemporary Sweden, as an investigative journalist is asked to research a murder in a wealthy family from the mid-1960s, and recruits the eponymous girl as his partner. The plot is topped and tailed by a largely separate vendetta with an Evil Capitalist (as opposed to the old man who wants the 1960s mystery investigated and is a Good Capitalist). But apart from that I was captivated both by the central mystery, whose brutal nature only gradually becomes apparent - and the solution to the ...
QRpedia is designed to offer a single QR code which points to the same article in multiple languages. The most common question about QRpedia is "What does it do if the article doesn't exist in my language?" Consider the following example... A French user is in a German museum. They scan a code – which points to de.qrwp/Nelahozeves Unfortunately, Wikipedia doesn't have the "Nelahozeves" article in French What should QRpedia do? Choices This has been a matter for much debate in the QRpedia team. I would greatly appreciate your thoughts on the subject. As we see it, our choices are... ...
TweetI didn't do a Feminist Friday last week, so this week you get a double whammy. Yesterday I commented on Twitter on the sexualised content of M&S advertising for young women. This morning, to reiterate my point, The Metro has a wrap around with just the image I was thinking of. Now, I don't know about you, but I don't sit up against my friends hugging and pouting and overtly posing like I belong in a soft porn movie. None of my friends do either, and they are not all resolutely antigenderisation. The message of the image for the Limited ...
Yesterday saw a bravura performance from Alex Salmond announcing his administration's programme for the new parliamentary session. In his speech we saw a central tenet of his political tactics in that all things emanating from Westminster are to be considered bad and all things from Holyrood are considered good. The SNP will ride to the protection of the nation while others are impotent or tied to interests elsewhere. Salmond is building the case for independence like an Alabama governor railing against Washington. As if somehow Scotland could do so much better on its own. I expressed my issue with this ...
We signed it off today: the first 'annual fund' for the University of Oxford in a couple of decades. This opening sentence might surprise you. After all, we launched 'Oxford Thinking': The Campaign for the University of Oxford way back in May 2008. So why are we only just getting round to asking our alumni for money to support it? In fact, a lot of asking has already happened. Lots of it personally: that the Campaign passed the £1 billion milestone last year is testament to that. Lots of it personally by telephone, too. And of course many colleges have ...
From And Mother makes three from 1971. Great quality. Craig is a million miles from the frumpy matron character in The Royal. And there's a wonderful performance from the great Frank Thornton.
South Glos seems to have been taken by surprise by the demand for the bags for cardboard recycling. According to this page all distribution points are out of stock at the time of writing. There will be a second wave of bags available in mid-September. Actually we've found a small quantity still in stock at Dodington Parish Hall, Finch Road - first come, first served! Sadly we know some residents didn't even realise the bags were available. Officers say it would be too expensive to notify everyone with a tag on their bin, so people who don't read blogs like ...
Thu 8th
09:26
Conference will be reviewing May 2011 results but is only asking 50% of questions is should be: Ther...
At the Lib Dem Conference next week there will be a review of the May 2011 election (see document here) which asks some interesting questions but it only goes so far in asking the right questions to get all that we could learn. The review will be asking: 1. Was your candidate in place early ...
I am so glad that Nadine Dorries' amendments on abortion counselling failed so spectacularly yesterday, with even the co-sponsor Frank Field distancing himself from them. The Burd came up with a cracking, if chilling phrase to describe Dorries' proposal: it insults women and represents potentially the worst attack on their legal capacity since the 19th Century when married women were not allowed to own their own propertyI am very pleased to say that no Scottish Liberal Democrat MP voted with Dorries and 9 out of the 11, including Mike Moore and Danny Alexander, voted against. Charles Kennedy and Bob Smith ...
Leading Cambridgeshire County Councillors have hit out at the NHS for "fining" Cambridgeshire more than £1.3 million in the last three years for delays in getting patients out of hospital and back into the community. Shadow Cabinet Member for Health, Geoff Heathcock and Shadow Cabinet Member for Adult Social Services, Fiona Whelan, says the system simply moves cash around the NHS achieving nothing. "This makes absolutely no sense," said Cllr Heathcock. "The county council's Adult Social Services are paying huge fines to the NHS for delays in discharging hospital patients back into the community. "Moving money in this way from ...
More Parliamentary hearings before people are appointed to key posts could be on the way as the BBC's Mark D'Arcy reports: One of the areas where the Commons committee system has been quietly accumulating extra clout is over the appointments of key quangocrats, industry regulators and similar posts. These are figures with enormous powers – and the pressure to legitimise them through some kind of parliamentary approval system has been building for quite a while. Now MPs are trying to formalise their gains and set out an explicit system for approving them – both to probe their attitudes and priorities ...
As every student of elementary economics will have been taught, there are two ways of analysing the effect of income tax on effort and enterprise. One assumes that work is disagreeable and leisure is agreeable. All workers have to do some work but at the margin have the choice of whether to do a little bit more or a little bit less. The higher the net wage (ie after tax) the more attractive work becomes compared to leisure. This is the rationale for paying time and a quarter or time and a half for overtime. A high marginal tax rate ...
The Dundee Russian School at Harris Academy on Saturdays that I had the pleasure of visiting in June during its Day of Russian Culture is now again open for the new term. The school has put together a short video (click 'play' below to listen) and more details of the school are available at http://dundee.russianedinburgh.org.uk.
I am quite intrigued by this article on the BBC website about 73 year old Middlesborough MP, Sir Stuart Bell. It seems that he does not have an office in his constituency, rarely raises local matters in the House of Commons and has not held a surgery for 14 years. Despite that people keep re-electing him: The Evening Gazette in Middlesbrough has raised fresh questions after it said it made 100 phone calls to him without anyone answering: The newspaper reported: "He says he meets with members of the public by appointment instead, and says people can reach him at ...
The Guardian reports on the extraordinary spat between David Cameron and Nadine Dorries MP during Prime Minister's questions yesterday, in which the PM ridiculed his own backbencher and she stormed out in a fit of pique. The paper says that MP for Mid Bedfordshire, exercised by the Lib Dems' sway over government policy, vented her anger through her question to Cameron: "The Liberal Democrats make up 8.7% of this parliament and yet they seem to be influencing our free school policy, health, many issues, immigration and abortion," she said. "Does the prime minister think it's about time he told the ...
Appeal Decisions Inquiry opened on 12 July 2011 Site visits made on 11 and 15 July 2011 by David Prentis BA BPl MRTPI an Inspector appointed by the Secretary of State for Communities and Local Government Decision date: 5 September 2011 Appeal A: APP/B1930/E/11/2148525 Block D, Former St Albans City Campus, Hatfield Road, St Albans AL1 3RX • The appeal is made under section 20 of the Planning (Listed Buildings and Conservation Areas) Act 1990 against a failure to give notice within the prescribed period of a decision on an application for listed building consent. • The appeal is made by Nicholas ...
Yesterday's PMQs saw Labour question Cameron on the election schedule for the tories' elected Police Commissioners in which it was revealed that they are to take place separately in autumn 2013 and not in joint-elections with the Local Elections in spring next year. Similarly, the extra cost of doing so will incur the public purse around £25 million pounds!! Furthermore, a Lib Dem party spokesperson has tonight revealed to the BBC that it was the Liberal Democrats who pressured their coalition partners into delaying the new elections in an attempt to "depoliticise" the campaigning environment and increase the chances of ...
Over the summer there has been an announcement from Government that gives communities and councils like Ribble Valley the chance to grow economically and become more accountable to local citizens. The announcement is that from 2013 the income from business rates will be kept by local councils such as Ribble Valley, as opposed to being pooled nationally as at present. An important qualification is that no council will lose out when the changes from the current system are made. This will mean that councils will collect and be responsible for some 40% of their budget on average, rather than the ...
