A mouthful of dust
MICHAEL Heseltine, Norman Lamont and I are all stuck behind the same corporation dustcart. I saw it the other day in Manchester, bearing the municipal liv- ery with a new slogan: 'Protecting jobs providing services.' In that order, natural- ly. The point was made with less grace in Liverpool, on banners wielded by a mob of council staff: 'What's the difference be- tween a Corpy worker and a Scud missile? You can't fire a Corpy worker.' Never mind the similarities — low payload, erra- tic performance, poor response to gui- dance, and a tendency to self-destruction . . . . Here we are, with a huge and costly financial upheaval, but no nearer to answering the question that matters: what are local authorities for? On Merseyside, the answer, though wrong, is clear: they are to be self perpetuating agancies of patronage. In Tory territory, muddle per- sists. Listen to George Walden, Conserva- tive MP for Buckingham reflecting on the Budget: 'The money for new leisure cen- tres for the young has to come from somewhere' — and better, he thinks from indirect tax than from direct tax. For leisure centres, read trainers, videos and designer lager. The money for these has to come from somewhere, but the young somehow find it without resort to taxation. They can find some to pay at the door of leisure centres — if they want them. Unless and until the muddle is resolved, we shall find ourselves stuck with higher taxes and stuck behind the same dustcart. The local authorities, Nigel Lawson said this week, had welcomed the Government's £140-a- head poll tax subvention as 'a wonderful way of overspending all over again'. I am pleased that he now accepts my modest proposal to rescind local authorities' power to raise taxes.
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