I worked there from 74 until 78. I know the Bay 1 you refer to, we kind of treated it like you got leprosy if you dared go that far down.... ;)
I started life there in the diode quality lab under Sam Makowski, in bay 4. Then the transistor quality lab - can't remember the guys name now, then the electronic maintenance section under Paul Pontin, then left.
I had some really good times with the people at Mullards. Some excellent people. Wish I could meet such a brilliant set of people again.....
Oh, they will make those cul-de-sacs and put up chicanes, speed humps and the like next.
They have done that in cambridge, resulting in a town I simply don't want to go anywhere near. I used to spebnd a few thousand quid a year in Cambridge shops. Not any more.
I used to live in Cherry Hinton, where they put all sorts of rubbish in the road and called it traffic calming. Just made it more of a challenge for the local tearaways to get through at 60
I see nothing wrong in complaining about excessive council tax. Here is a brief summary of the increases where I live over the past few years:
Council tax in 1994 was £409. By 2001 it had risen to £659.
1995 brought an increase of 5.6%. In 1996 it was 6.7% In 1997 the increase was 6.5%
1998 saw a staggering 9% jump In 1999 only slightly less shocking at 8.9%. In 2000 it was 6.7% In 2001 5.7%
This year the increase was around 13%
But look at the inflation rates for the years 1995 through 2000. In
1995 the average headline inflation rate was 3.4%, in 1996 it was less, at 2.4%. Inflation was 3.1% in 1997, 3.4% in 1998, in 1999 it dropped to a measly 1.4%, but rose somewhat to 2.9% in 2000, only to fall back down to 2.0%.
Therefore, either councils are being extremely profligate with our money, or they haven't a clue how to spend it wisely, or they are being ripped off by cowboy contractors, or they just don't give a damn and will carry on milking council taxpayers for ever because they can, and because traditionally council tax payers have paid up like the complicit little serfs they usually are. More and more people are withholding some or all of their tax as a protest, however, and if the increase next year is more than a fraction above the inflation rate, there will be a groundswell of civil disobedience, of that I am certain.
It's for private waste only, commercial waste is supposedly not allowed but if private waste does exceed certain amounts then you may have to pay for it. There are no permits that I know of. One of the vans had an Irish number plate. Last time I used the dump for getting rid of old bricks (10 years back) I was confronted with 'the guvnor' of the dump who told me it was no longer under the council but owned by Lee Valley Water. "You can't dump that here, he said, but if you look after the boys they might help you out". I called the council to find he was talking a load of sh*te.
It's all backhanders with these fellas. This is nothing though, my sister has a new story to tell every day about the council she works for....stealing vans...crashing council vehicles while doing their private work....on and on...and they get away with it! Not one of them have been sacked. The biggest scam there is to claim a council vehicle has hit your car. Many of the claimants are council employees themselves. In one case a council worker claimed he had hit his private car with the council vehicle he was driving, claimed and was paid out. In almost every case the vehicle is worth around £1000 so it gets written off. Rant over.....(bloody hell...I'll be reading the Daily Mail soon)
Or you will find that something like 3/4 of their funding comes from, and is dictated by, central government. So if Tony and his cronies decide council A is not getting any more money this year, and council A have spending plans premised on an overall rise of 2%, then they have to charge 8% extra to all local taxpayers. It is a great scam for Prudence Brown to raise even more tax without appearing to be the bad boy.
None of this should be taken as meaning I approve of any aspect of it, or that I believe that any or all councils spend money wisely and efficiently. But that's how the system works.
So Council Tax has to keep pace with inflation, has it? Is that in the rules somewhere?
Or the cost of the sort of services councils provide (which aren't like buying beans from a supermarket, after all) aren't typical of the sort of measure that people use when they calculate inflation.
So what? Local taxes are for the provision of services. I pay the taxes, I get no services. And the taxes rise by more than the rate of inflation each and every year.
"PoP" wrote | I had some really good times with the people at Mullards. Some | excellent people. Wish I could meet such a brilliant set of people | again.....
Are you suggesting the people here don't compare in some way?
Actually, come to think of it, my kids do now that the operator has cancelled a service and they have to walk for 20 mins from the nearest stop; but that's another story.
Nah hte rules say taxes must bound ahead of inflation while public sector wages must languish and wages rises must always be less than inflation.
It's difficult to see what causes the guld between income and outgoings, or at least until you see how councillors line their pockets with "expenses". Our local council leader rattled up 60K in expenses last year. I have business interests in Germany, Italy, Switzerland and the UK. I do three to four lecture tours a year. I pay for it all from my own pocket. My expenses are not 60K/pa.
Yeah, but at least the Government is making SOME attempt to match ability to pay to the size of the bill. Stands to reason that those with larger properties are worth more, therefore they should pay more, just like smaller cars are taxed less than larger ones.
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