Brighton and Hove Green Led Council - Budget Consultation Farce #2

Following on from my last damning of Brighton and Hove Greens for being blindly loyal to unfounded predictions - putting blind faith in bad guesses and getting it wrong (regarding the budget - their foolishness over 'man made global warming' is for another day!).

The Greens' Jason Kitcat produced a council budget for two years, instead of the usual one year.

In The Argus local newspaper I remember (but can't find the link) a report of Tory councillor Theobald saying it was not sensible to be setting a two year budget when it is impossible to know what could happen between then and now.

I, myself, challenged Kitcat on twitter about this - pointing out the the existing 2.5% freeze grant (that Kitcat wants to reject) was only confirmed a short time before the budget was set - no one knew about it a year ago, let alone two years ago! So what might the future hold? Kitcat simply insisted that nothing had been announced for next year, so it was sensible to assume there would be nothing.

Kitcat was further challenged on his crystal ball gazing by a local Labour activist - again to no avail.

Now, it hss just been reported that the government are indeed considering additional grants *next year* to councils who freeze their council tax this year!

Councils could be financially protected in the future if they freeze council tax this year, communities secretary Eric Pickles has hinted.
http://www.localgov.co.uk/index.cfm?method=news.detail&id=104744

Theobald didn't *know*, I didn't *know*, the labour activist didn't *know* - but we all recognised that you don't dump a huge bill on council taxpayers 'on the off chance'. Meanwhile, Kitcat didn't *know* either, but showed blind faith in his own guess - a guess that hammers local taxpayers - a guess that turns out to be wrong.