The camera never lies?

Finance | Andrew Samuel | 11 Aug 2010

Andrew Samuel examines the suggestion that the Big Society concept lets the government off the hook when it comes to spending cuts.

A short while ago I was discussing the Big Society concept and had what I thought was a rather cynical notion put to me.

Quite simply, it was suggested that by decentralising regional expenditure and handing over the greatly hammered budgets to local bodies, government could effectively and efficiently shift the blame for the induced problems created by the inevitable huge cuts to services.

Your own people did it..." they'll be able to say, "...it wasn't us!"

Did I just hear of the first evidence of this yesterday?

A number of issues have made the media headlines around proposals by some local authorities to switch off or remove speed cameras following a cut in funding from Government.

To operate and maintain speed cameras costs local authorities an estimated £30m a year.

Leaving aside debates on fairness, the collective profit from the cameras that do catch speeding motorists, reportedly some £100 million a year, goes straight to the Treasury.

So with big cuts afoot and savings to be made, local authorities have said they can't afford to subsidise the running of their speed cameras and they'll have to go.

And here is my deep concern in one simple line as reported by The Guardian: "The Department for Transport said it was for local authorities to decide how road safety was funded and improved."

Who's Who: Andrew Samuel

Comments

[Cancel] | Reply to:

Name *

Email *

Organisation

Job Title

Comments *

Verification *

* Please read our Community Standards

Close »

Community Standards

The civilsociety.co.uk community and comments board is intended as a platform for informed and civilised debate.

We hope to encourage a broad range of views, however, there are standards that we expect commentators to uphold. We reserve the right to delete or amend any comments that do not adhere to these standards.

We welcome:

Robust but respectful debate
Strongly held opinions
Intelligent relevant discussion
The sharing of relevant experiences
New participants

We will not publish:

Rude, threatening, offensive, obscene or abusive language, or links to such material
Links to commercial organisations or spam postings. The comments board is not an advertising platform
The posting of contact details for yourself or others
Comments intended for malicious purpose or mindless abuse
Comments purporting to be from another person or organisation under false pretences
Gratuitous criticism, commentary or self-promotion
Any material which breaches copyright or privacy laws, or could be considered libellous
The use of the comments board for the pursuit or extension of personal disputes

Be aware:

Views expressed on the comments board are left at users’ discretion and are in no way views held or supported by Civil Society Media
Comments left by others may not be accurate, do not rely on them as fact
You may be misunderstood - sarcasm and humour can easily be taken out of context, try to be clear

Please:

Enjoy the opportunity to express your opinion and respect the right of others to express theirs
Confine your remarks to issues rather than personalities

Together we can keep our community a polite, respectful and intelligent platform for discussion.

Tags

Big Society Statutory funding

Andrew ('Sam' to friends) is an ICT Champion based with the Voluntary Organisations' Network North East (VONNE). He is also governor of St Teresa's Catholic Primary School in Heaton and has worked in the Derbyshire coal mines.

Ian Allsop (50) David Davison (42) John Tate (42) Robert Ashton (30) Tania Mason (22) Paul Bennett (22) Gordon Hunter (17) Daniel Phelan (13) Vibeka Mair (10) Andrew Hind CB (10)

David Philpott (9) Gareth Jones (8) Niki May Young (8) Celina Ribeiro (7) Andrew Chaggar (5) Rui Domingues (5) James Brooke Turner (4) Sir Stuart Etherington (4) Kate Sayer (3) Jeremy Swain (3) Garreth Spillane (3) Alistair Gibbons (3) Claris D'cruz (2) Richard Maitland (2) Adrian Beney (2) Iain Pritchard (2) Daniel Fletcher (2) Martin Brookes (2) Tesse Akpeki (2) Hal Broadbent (2) Stephen Hammersley (2) June O'Sullivan (2) Belinda Pratten (2) Simon Steeden (2) Mark Astarita (1) Don Bawtree (1) Tim Brown (1) Sir Stephen Bubb (1) Victoria Cook (1) Lindsay Gray (1) Nick Ivey (1) Iona Joy (1) John Kelly (1) Heather Lamont (1) Stephen Lloyd (1) Lucy McLynn (1) Chris Oulton (1) Julian Rathbone (1) Peter Scott (1) Socrates Socratous (1) Richard Weaver (1) Karl Wilding (1) Richard Williams (1) Roger Chester (1) Matthew Bowcock (1) Pauline Broomhead (1) Reuben Turner (1) Martin Farrell (1) Paul Gibson (1) Becky Slack (1) Jonathon Grapsas (1) Andrew Scadding (1) Simon Hebditch (1) Su Sayer (1) Martin Birch (1) Jonathan Lewis (1) Sara Llewellin (1) John Low (1) Dame Mary Marsh (1) Ruth Murphy (1) Colin Nee (1) Sally O’Neill (1) Julia Unwin (1) Kate Rogers (1) Malcolm Hayday (1) Nick Brooks (1) Nick Wilkie (1) Filippo Addarii (1) Kimberley Scharf (1) Jakes Ferguson (1) Jessica Sklair (1) Joe Turner (1) Rob Dyson (1) Nick Cater (1) John May (1) Julian Blake (1) Andy Williamson (1) Malcolm Hurlston (1) Andrew Samuel (1) Chester Mojay-Sinclare (1) Paul Amadi (1) Kirsty Weakley (1) Neil Mapes (1) Dan Corry (1) Peter Holbrook (1) Peter Mitchell (1) Billy Dove (1) Andrew Ketteringham (1) Jackie Turpin (1) Lynne Robb (1) Jonathan Crown (1) Paul Emery (1) Ruchir Shah (1) Pesh Framjee (1) Sukhvinder Kaur-Stubbs (1) Vicki Prout (1) Lisa Clavering (1) Paul Farmer (1) Neelam Makhijani (1) Jonathan Bruck (1)

Less +++ More +++