Gary's views

Gary's weekly views

Each week an article by Gary has appeared in the Plympton Plymstock and Ivybridge News in South West Devon. The articles are published here

ABOVE THE LINE

Where ever you live, it is best not to live just above the line. Not the railway line, you can get used to the noise, but the benefit line, from which there is no escape. The benefit line: live on or below it and there is support to be had, rightly so. Live well above it, well you probably don’t need help, good for you. Live just above it, even by a centimetre, and nothing, zilch, a big fat zero. You can just about afford those nasty bills that slip silently onto the doormat, but only just and probably at some sacrifice.

This has always been a problem, but it is getting worse. Household bills hardly ever go down, they rise remorselessly. But for some years the cost of gas and electricity either remained static or reduced for many of us. So although the cost of water rose like a frenzied rocket, and council tax made steady progress on its journey towards unaffordability, our power bills mainly came down. Those days are gone.

Now all of those horrible buff envelopes contain bad news and for those just above the line we are fast approaching unsustainability. It makes it much worse, if you are struggling, to know that the family next door, who probably go out more often than you do, are claiming every benefit in the book – legitimately. I may be very content working for ten pounds an hour, until I discover the person working at the next desk is getting eleven pounds an hour, whereupon I suddenly become unhappy. It’s called human nature.

What is to be done?

Everyone is looking at it, but there is as yet no consensus. Nor is there a perfect solution, so here are my imperfect suggestions:
- The real Biggie is council tax, and we should remove the costs of education and social services from local government and significantly lower the cost base.
- Local government needs to focus on its core business, not all the frilly bits
- We need to get the cost of water in the south west subsidised in some way to benefit everyone, not just those below the line, but in the meantime we should all move onto water meters
- We need a new generation on nuclear power stations in this country to produce affordable clean power for the future.
A radical solution has to be found, before the line becomes a noose.

posted by Nigel on Thursday, April 13, 2006