Another Labour Swindle

Emptying dustbins, sweeping streets, repairing roads & pavements, providing care for the elderly, providing schools, libraries, swimming baths and other essential public services . . . These are all things people WANT from their local council. But the Labour party has other ideas.

Gordon Brown & Co. have issued a list of targets for local authorities, which are all about Labour's big government bureaucracy and nothing to do with what people want their Council Tax to be buying.
This is what the Labour party wants local councils to do as first priorities:

• Persuade kids aged 16-18 who aren't at school to get a job or training
• Hand out contraceptives and morning-after pills at schools to reduce the rate of teenage pregnancies
• Provide more (affordable) social housing
• Nag people into reducing their carbon dioxide emissions
• Nag fat kids into losing weight
• Reduce the burglary rate
• Nag adults into taking adult education courses even though it has been government policy for years to price them out of existence
• Nag people into giving up smoking
• Nag people into believing that people from different ethnic backgrounds have integrated into the community whether they have or they haven't
• Reducing death rates in hospitals
• Increasing environmental sustainability

Gordon Brown would have us believe these targets are in line with 'the needs and wishes of local people themselves'.

Communities Secretary Hazel Blears would have us believe the new targets will mean 'less red tape and more freedom for local authorities to deliver what local people want'.

And to back this up, councils all over the country will be wasting taxpayers' cash on an advertising campaign aimed at convincing people they're getting value for money.