Budgeting, as I have discussed previously, is about making decisions; decisions about what constitute your priorities. Food or Heating? Deposit on a car, or a holiday? Health or Education? As individuals, we make trade-offs between different ways of using our money (today, mine was fixing the car or tiling the bathroom. The former won.)

Government - national and local - must also define their priorities, and let's not forget that they are also making decisions about spending our money. But while elected officials are quick to say something is a priority, they are less keen on the obligatory action to balance the books: saying something is not a priority.

A quick unscientific example? Compare Google Search results for the following phrases:

• Politics "This is a Priority": ~17,000 results
• Politics "This is not a Priority": ~ 400 results

The 3 Year Plan (a paltry 0.6 on the Stalinometer)

At last week's Cabinet meeting, one of the items under discussion was the Corporate Plan 2008-11, which I mentioned a couple of weeks ago. This document again quotes the "Our City" philosophy of the current city leadership:

The four Our City themes are priorities that will guide all our activity

• Our City: Ambitious Together – going for growth that all can contribute to and benefit from.
• Our City: Making a Difference – achieving lasting improvements in the key services we provide that are not currently up to standard.
• Our City: Safer and Healthier – ensuring thawt citizens feel safe from crime and anti-social behaviour and can enjoy a healthy lifestyle.
• Our City: Better Neighbourhoods – ensuring that Bristol residents experience significant change in the physical quality of their neighbourhoods and have opportunities to shape improvements at this level.

I'm busy working on another round of investigations into the Redland Green School Overspend, so I'm not going to go through this mushy document (at minimum a Type 5 on the Bristol Scale) in great detail, but I will highlight one section:

2.1 A REGIONAL CAPITAL
To deliver our vision for Bristol as an ambitious international city we need to maintain and build the opportunities for investment and economic growth, working with all sectors to achieve a dynamic economy that creates and sustains jobs for Bristol residents. We need to encourage growing business sectors, such as creative industries, environmental technologies and financial services. The creative industries sector, is one of the fastest growing in the region’s economy. It is worth £1 billion in the south west of England and employs 5% of the region’s workforce. In Bristol, the sector employs 3.7% of the workforce and generates a turnover in excess of £360 million.

Note the emphasis on creative industries, which employ a massive "3.7% 5% of the region's workforce". They need "encouragement", it says. What does that mean? If you were to ask me how to encourage any industry, I'd say you should keep regulation to a minimum, set taxation low and - as a politician - generally just keep out of the way. I wonder if that's what the council means by "encourage"?

Percentages are a great way to obfuscate reality, so I always prefer to dig out the absolute numbers. If we have a look at regional statistics clearing house Intelligence West, a few calculation on the dataset Unemployment Rate suggests that the total West of England regional workforce figure from which this percentage is derived is around 503,000 people. So the total regional "creative" workforce is around 18,600 25,100 people.

For comparison, (using the Major Employers Dataset) the four local authorities employ 38,500 people (Bristol City Council alone employs 16,500 people). The total public sector employment in the area is around 75,000 versus around 111,000 employed by the largest private employers.

Which all tells us that over 63% of people in the area(l) work in small business (the uncreative sector?) I think this tells us that we don't need to "encourage" any particular bit of the economy, other than by the measures I offered above: by minimising regulation and keeping tax low. And if we're not doing so much encouraging, perhaps we won't need to spend so much on councillors' allowances and officers' wages.

As part of my continuing mission to raise the level of political debate in Bristol, I offer the following useful guide to local issues, based on previous work conducted by the University of Bristol.

For further information on the issues raised, use these links:

1. Council Tax
2. Bus Rapid Transit
3. Museum of Bristol
4. Redland Green School Overspend
5. Tilting at Windmills
6. Bristol Environmental Technology Sector
7. The Gas

Note - I put Type 7 in to keep Jon Eccles at Secular Backlash happy. I don't follow football myself, since it's a girls' game.

(On a related point, why did the entire city smell a bit funny yesterday? It wasn't just me - several people commented on it.)

The following document was presented at the full meeting of Bristol City Council on 1st April 2008. It is not - and I have checked - an April Fool's Jape.

Report of the Members' Renumeration Independent Review Panel

[Para 6] Allowance for Leader of the Council

6.1 At its meeting on 19 June 2007 the Full Council accepted the Panel’s recommendation that the Leader’s remuneration package should be no less than £50,000 per annum – to be implemented via a stepped approach over a 4 year period (indexed-linked from 2007/08 values). In order to achieve this recommendation the Panel recommends the following annual increases for the Leader of the Council’s SRA:

• 2008/09 - £10k + indexation year 1 x 25%
• 2009/10 - £10k + indexation years 1- 2 x 50%
• 2010/11 - £10k + indexation years 1- 3 x 75%
• 2011/12 - £10k + indexation years 1- 4 x 100%

Sorry, what was that?

"The Leader's renumeration package should be no less than £50,000 per annum".

Right. So we've just had another inflation busting increase in Council Tax, for which we get our rubbish collected every other week, an average police service, and an achingly PC fire service [who spend 28 pence of every pound they receive on gold-plated public sector pensions]. We're in the middle of a credit crunch, after ten years of profligate tax and spend politics by London government, and with everyone looking to tighten their belts.

Yes, clearly this is the time to give a 25% per year pay rise to someone doing a job that previous generations would have regarded as a bit of part-time voluntary work. Fantastic.

[Para 7] Annual Indexation

7.1 Members of the panel endorse their original recommendation that the following indexation should be applied:

• Basic Allowance, Special Responsibility Allowances, Dependent Carers’ Allowances and Co-optees’ Allowance: index to annual officer pay increase – this percentage increase is nationally negotiated and related to what local government can afford and also treats Officers and Members equally for annual increase in remuneration.
• Mileage Rates: maintain indexation to Approved Mileage Allowance Payment (AMAP or Inland Revenue) rates.
• Subsistence Rates: continue to index to Officer rates, except where relevant elements are booked directly by Members’ Services.

Even better, there is now a formal link between councillor's allowances and the salaries and benefits of council officers in another inflation-happy positive feedback cycle.

Consternation in the newspapers today over proposals by the British government to legitimise "Islamic Bonds" or "Sukuk", and more importantly sell a portion of our national debt in such a way that it complies with the dictates of Sharia law. This is not technically "news" in that the Government was talking about it a year ago, and the FT was writing about if four months ago.

I think this is actually quite a good idea. Why? Because when you sell debt you must promise to pay the buyer a regular fee for their service (the coupon). Sharia-compliant bonds by definition offer a lesser return to investors than a regular gilt in return for ideological compliance. So that means we - as a nation - can borrow money for less.

Now as to whether that money would be well spent, or just pissed up the wall - that's another matter entirely. The reason this policy is suddenly important is because the UK Government will need to borrow more money to cover the last ten years of reckless central spending. and Sharia-compliant gilts would be a way of tapping into a deep well of Middle-Eastern money.

I've previously discussed the related subject of Islamic Banking. Christian societies have historically expressed similar concerns over lending money with interest (usury) and developed very similar financial structures such as the Contractum Trinius to balance doctrinal obligations against financial realities. It has been said that the Devil has all the best tunes. The oft-forgotten corollary is that God has all the best accountants.

The unelected Chair of the Avon and Somerset Police Authority has announced a rise in the price of policing by 4.86% this year. So, updating a previous post, these are the forecast Council Tax bands for Bristol:

The Cabinet of the City of Bristol is meeting today (Mon 4th Feb), with a large element of the meeting relating to the City's Budget for 08/09.

The PDF versions of the budget proposals (Revenue & Capital) are available from the Council website, and an Excel version of the Revenue Budget is available from this blog:

http://www.jamesbarlow.co.uk/files/draftbccbudgetjmbv1.xls

Key points for Council Tax Payers:

• UK Inflation is either 2.1% (CPI) or 4.0% (RPI) depending on which statistic you prefer.
• The total revenue budget for Bristol is forecast to be £327,900,000.00
• The grant from Central Government (your money) is £158,145,000.00
• The net requirement from taxpayers (also your money) is forecast to be £167,120,000.00
• The Taxbase (see here) is forecast to be 131,384 households
• For Council services (excluding Police & Fire) a Band D household will pay £1272.00, a rise of exactly 4% on last year's figure.

An interesting point here - just from the growth in new households in Bristol, the council would have netted an extra £3.5 million in council tax receipts at last year's prices. One would think that, given the economies of scale associated with buying services for 403,000 people, one of these days we would actually get a real or even absolute reduction in the growth of tax rates. Well, not this year.

Avon Fire Authority had a think about budgets at their January 11th meeting, and they want £44,835,000 which will add 4.72% to the Council Tax bill. New figure? Around £56.15 for a Band D property. This is with an anticipated increase in the (Area) Taxbase of 1.2% from around 355,614 to 359,800. No economies of scale there either.

Avon & Somerset Police and have yet to release a forecast for the next financial year. Last year they raised their prices by 6.7% to £147.17 for a Band D property, with the following comment from the unelected chair of the Police Authority:

Those living in a Band D house in Avon and Somerset will pay around 40 pence a day in their council tax towards policing – that's way less than the cost of a loaf of bread.

I wonder if they'll be making that comparison this year? You can actually get a sliced, white own-brand loaf for 37 pence at Tesco, although the average price is nearer a pound.

Given that the Police have actually underspent in Bristol by £383,000 in the current year, one would hope we would get a bit of a discount this time. If we assume the Police manage to keep their increase to 4.0%, the new Band D price will be £153.06 (up by £5.89), which is - per head - less than the city spends on rubbish.

The forecast Council Tax figures for Bristol? Brace yourself:

If you can't make it to the meeting, remember you can watch it online with the Public-I webcasting system. Make the effort, guys - it's your money and your city.

If you get bored, why not play a game of Buzzword Bingo. Download your free game card here:

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