Wrong.
We all pay the same taxes. The cities get a far higher central government support grant for local government. That's why rural areas pay similar council tax but get far poorer services. The difference in support is not small. If you take least to most it can be double.
... a statement that is completely without foundation.
Re: funding subsidy
This is the best I can do speedily. I am sure there are better data but this is all I could find right now. Take a look at page 8:
Peter Scott
That's perfectly usable. I think you need a sense of proportion towards public investment priorities.
On Thu, 8 Jan 2009 10:29:34 +0000, a certain chimpanzee, TheOldFellow randomly hit the keyboard and produced:
I live in a suburb of one of the 'core cities'; we have high crime levels and the insurance premiums to prove it; I live less than a mile from a motorway junction yet it takes ten minutes to get onto it in the mornings; the bus takes forty minutes to get into the city centre. On top of that, my broadband connection struggles to get 2Mbps. It sounds like I need to move to the countryside to get better communications and a lower cost of living.
It isn't unpleasant, but we do get irked with being told we are net consumers by city folk, when the reality is the exact reverse.
wrong, because its the other way around.
Yup.
We live a mile from the village shop and petrol station. And the surgery.
Our local hairdresser comes by car and cuts our hair for a fiver.
I get 3Mbps broadband.
It took a few years to get the exchange enabled though.
To 'enjoy' city life I have to drive 25 miles, to get ripped of fo parking, and spend the last 20 minutes of the 40 minute journey, getting from the outskirts to the center. Breaking my suspension on speed humps all the way.
I pay just as much council/income tax as the city, but get zero back for it.
Fortunately. I don't want speed humps, chicanes, street lights, gay day centers, or anything like that.
The water that falls on thelad here is ultimatley drunk my teh good citizens of teh downstream towns. We don't charge them for it. The barley and wheat that is grown here comes the milk, the beer, and the vodkas drunk by those cities. They don't even pay enough to make it profitable.
I can buy a lamb or a half pig, butchered for £100. In the supermarket it tastes of nothing, and cost 3-4 times as much.
But it does come wrapped in plastic waste.
Look at the figures (lower down I have linked to a document)
And don't let facts get in the way of a strongly held opinion
Peter Scott
Hee hee! So we're all woad-painted savages here are we? Just scratching, and waiting with sagging, drooling jaws for civilisation to arrive from the cities? I think not. What on earth makes you think that technological development comes from cities?
That's odd because the actual spend on these services is lower in country areas. See the document I linked to elsewhere in this thread. You can make baseless assertions but the facts point in the opposite direction. It has been government-stated policy for many years to divert money from rural areas to prop up the crumbling 'civilisation' in large cities.
Peter Scott
Sorry to add yet another comment but...
Someone just pointed out to me that the cities did not develop at all until technological developments in the country enabled fewer people on the farms to feed the growing city populations. So civilisation started in the country (and some would say has remained there). Don't believe me, just read a history book.
Peter Scott
It comes from having a big enough population to develop stuff. You can't get a big population in rural surroundings.
Not per person it isn't.
Why. They don't agree with what you say. After all we aren't talking about 2000 year old civilizations here, unless you have evidence of broadband in the pyramids.
This is trying to hit a moving target. One minute you are talking about civilisation, then when you start losing the argument, you change the subject back to broadband.
As I suggested, just take a look at page 8 of:
I look at your arguments rather like listening to the co2 deniers or the Victorian Punch cartoon of the man in the zoo standing next to a giraffe saying 'there is no such animal'. As I said, read a history book about what enabled the growth of cities. Particularly why they started to grow exponentially after the introduction of better farming methods 200 years ago.
Peter Scott
I have not started to lose. You are the one that states that the rural society is not subsidised by cities. However it costs more to provide the services to the rural parts and you don't pay more. That means you are subsidised more. Its quit simple.
and city spending. It talks about regional spending. Maybe you think the SE is all city and the North west is all farms?
Again, what has that got to do with the argument? Nobody has said that growing food is not required and farmers get paid to do so. All of the major advances have been made as the population grows and it doesn't grow without cities. You need a minimum population density for innovations to happen. Even tractors were developed in the city.
As it happens I fail to see what your arguments are based on and you don't appear to be able to state what.
cities were always parasitic on the countryside until a brief period in industrial times when they actually manufactured something useful.
Now they are more or less open prisons for the uncivilised.
Oh at last! Someone who has a knowledge of history and is prepared to look at evidence. Thank you Nat for your contribution.
I think that this correspondence had better close as it's impossible to argue a case with someone who has a closed mind.
Peter Scott
What you meant to say was that he is just as deluded as you. ;-)
Quite agree, look back through history. Cities do not develop until agriculture is productive enough to release people from food production to do other things. If the countryside becomes unproductive, say due to a few years drought, any cities supported by that countryside collapse as they have no support and cannot support themselves.
This has not changed, but it appears that many people do not realise it. Probably due to the global supply chains we have now and the false premise that if one food source fails there are plenty of others to buy from. This is not the case. When food becomes scarce the exporting countries will feed their own populace first and export second. As was highlighted last year.
The relationship between cities and countryside is a symbiosis but out of cities or countryside the one that starts and ends any period with cities is the countryside.
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