Middle class misery

[UncleEbenezer]

Interesting article in the Telegraph today about Woking Council. They apparently invested in property development which went way over budget. Now their council taxes will be going up and service may be cut.

Woking is one of quite a few councils to have been featured in Private Eye for its expensive, ill-judged projects over the years. Though Croydon has had the most coverage for pouring money into dodgy property development.

To be fair, councils are damned if they do, damned if they don't here. With central government pushing them to boost their budgets by being entrepreneurial, it could easily become a choice between ill-judged projects for which they're utterly unqualified, vs being labelled luddites and losing out on government funding.

[Gerry557]

So most of those people in the article, post budget should have a bit more take home going forward.

Off to book another holiday, lease a better car and moan I'm still no better off.

[stevensfo]

So most of those people in the article, post budget should have a bit more take home going forward.

Off to book another holiday, lease a better car and moan I'm still no better off.

Sorry, off at a tangent, but when I go on holiday, the last thing I want is a better car. For two of us, the smaller the better. Easier to park, cheaper to drive.

Steve

PS Apart from Jordan, where we given a car that looked suicidal and was so low powered that I had to re-learn how to drive a gear shift car and get it up steep inclines. That 1st gear got a lot of heavy use!

Steve

[Leothebear]

I think it's the culture change brought about by the Thatcher doctrine. "Why save for something wnen you can borrow and have it now!"

"A new car? - Just remortgage your house!"

I was guilty of this once or twice. I did learn however.

I did not realise that Thatcher was the root cause of encouraging borrowing, how so?

It was she who brought about the deregulation of mortgage borrowing. Before her, increasing your mortgage for purposes other than property was not possible.