It’s not just the economy, stupid.
It’s everything, stupid.

 I have received the following press release from Buckinghamshire County Council, which illustrates the scale of the action needed to deal with the legacy of the last government:

COUNTY AGREES £9.2m SPENDING REDUCTIONS IN 2010/11 BUDGET

At a meeting unprecedented in Buckinghamshire County Council’s history, members today (Thursday 5 August) agreed a revised budget to achieve immediate in-year spending reductions of £9.2 million, to avoid spending £9m of taxpayers’ money that the council doesn’t have. 

Increased spending pressures within some services and the reduction of the Government’s Area Based Grants to local authorities underpin the decisions taken today, at what is believed to be the only extraordinary budget meeting in Buckinghamshire’s long history. 

Recommendations agreed were:

 To recommend urgent changes to the current year’s budget – as set out in the July 26 Cabinet report (See link http://www.buckscc.gov.uk/moderngov/mgConvert2PDF.aspx?ID=14489)

To agree to fund the historic overspend on Client Transport of £885,000 from General Fund Reserves.

To note Leader David Shakespeare’s allocation of £1.2m from contingency funds to ease pressure in Children’s Safeguarding and to further note confirmation of £800,000 allocated within contingency funds to cover potential pressure identified in the Adults and Family Wellbeing portfolio, should this be required.

The council’s contingency funds are amounts of money held centrally for use on unexpected issues that may arise during the year. Repayment depends on circumstances and is judged case by case. Fund levels are regularly reviewed as part of the budget monitoring and medium term planning processes to ensure a prudent level is maintained.

Mr Shakespeare said: “The bottom line is that if we fail in our duty to deal with this emerging situation now, we would simply be guaranteeing having to make bigger and deeper cuts to public services because of the delay.

“While others may shy away from the difficult decision, we have to take responsibility for dealing with the situation now, and however regrettable some of these reductions may be, we have to take decisive action on behalf of our taxpayers.”

The council is already committed to making savings of £52m over the next four years through efficiencies, including £21m through its Transformation initiative.

The Queen’s Speech: 15 Bills, but only 33 days left of Parliament:

Labour has today promised “guarantees not gambles” as it used the final Queen’s Speech to draw dividing lines with the Conservatives ahead of the general election.

The Queen set out the Government’s legislative agenda for the 33 sitting days left until the last date for a general election, in a programme containing 13 Bills and two draft Bills.

The measures include plans to reform the financial services industry, new rights for employers to allow them to positively discriminate, greater powers to disconnect internet download cheats, and plans to give free care to the most vulnerable.

But the package, described by a Cabinet minister as the “most political in 12 years” has caused consternation because critics say much of the legislation is of no benefit to voters but is instead designed to “smoke out” the Conservatives.

However, Daniel Finkelstein tells us of his experience of focus group polling about a past Queen’s speech:

Well, the pollster said slowly, here’s the thing. They didn’t answer any of the questions you posed because, erm, they’d never heard of the announcement. None of them. At all. They sort of knew who Gordon Brown was, they weren’t totally sure what a billion was, although it sounded like a lot of money, but they most certainly hadn’t come across this spending stuff.

While that seems rather bleak, it does demonstrate that power and people have become too distant. This is why we have to bring power closer to the people.

This post has been brought forward from February and updated.

Conservatives want to build a stronger, safer society where opportunity and power are spread much more widely and fairly. We believe communities are strongest when everyone has a free and fair say in the decisions that affect them. From local council services and planning decisions, to local policing priorities, people should have as much power and choice as possible.

Under Labour, the rise of top-down central and regional government control has undermined local councils and allowed people too little say over decisions that directly affect them locally. Without real local democracy, communities are made weaker: social responsibility, civic involvement and the inclusion of vulnerable people in social life are all being inhibited.

This Green Paper outlines our new programme of political decentralisation to revitalise democracy and strengthen community life; a five-pillar strategy to shift power away from the central state and firmly back to local people

Launching the paper, David Cameron …

… explained that “decentralisation, devolution and empowerment” are naturally part of a Conservative approach to government, and stressed the importance of an “empowering state” rather than an “overpowering state”.

‘Control Shift’, our decentralisation green paper, outlines a series of policies that will see powers transferred from the central state to local people and local institutions

And via David Cameron: A radical power shift:

When one-size-fits-all solutions are dispensed from the centre, it’s not surprising they so often fail local communities. When people experience a yawning gap between the changes they want to see and those they can directly affect, it is inevitable that demoralisation and democratic disengagement follow.

The paper — Control Shift — is remarkable. These proposals would transform Britain, rolling back “a century of centralisation”, itself an encouraging admission of the need to make a clean break from the past. We have become too used to Labour’s “radical reform” meaning “minor organisational change”: this is different, and I recommend you discover how different by reading the proposals.

Bloomberg just ran a story on municipalities entering into derivatives contracts to help finance budget deficits. I’ve seen this movie before about 15 years ago, and I can tell you how it ends: in tears.

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