#councils

"we've repaired another piece of shit that was destroyed by the Neverseens. Let this be a LESSON to everyone that we are STRONG."

and so it goes every time

Austerity has been biting since 2010, when George Osborne slashed the amount of money councils could receive from central government in one of his first acts as chancellor. Between 2010 and 2020, they lost more than 50% of their government grants in real terms. Six councils have already gone ‘bankrupt’ in the last two years while more than half of the rest say they could follow, meaning they could be taken over by Whitehall or replaced by new authorities.

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Councils are responsible for 800 different services, including meeting Britain’s soaring demand for social care. They also run schools, public health, housing, planning and licensing. “Everyone thinks that councils [just] collect the bins and fix the roads,” said Revans. “We do so, so much more.” Most council services are mandatory, meaning they must legally be delivered. But others – including leisure centres, pest control, museums, and youth clubs – are discretionary, meaning councils can choose whether to offer them or not.

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“For years now, entertainment mega-corporations have targeted cash-strapped councils as amenable, affordable hosts for their events. From Clapham Common to Glasgow Green, city-dwellers across the UK have become accustomed to basslines vibrating their windows, five-metre fences encircling their playgrounds, and security guards policing what are effectively their gardens.

“Yet as entertainment companies try to recuperate massive pandemic losses with aggressive multi-year deals, while the climate crisis renders urban summers increasingly unbearable, the privatisation of public parkland is becoming harder to swallow.

“In April, dozens of Haringey residents descended on FoFP’s biggest-ever meeting to vent their frustrations, while a recent petition demanding private companies keep their hands off Finsbury Park was signed by thousands ... For the most part, the work of groups like FoFP and FCC is polite engagement with the council to ensure the park is properly maintained. Yet as councils’ approach to major events has become more aggressive, so have the friends groups’.

Though the Reformers rejected church tradition as a source of divine revelation, they did not thereby despise the entire scope of Christian tradition. John Calvin and Martin Luther frequently quoted the Church Fathers, especially Augustine. They believed the church had learned much in her history, and they wished to conserve what was true in that tradition. For example, the Reformers embraced the doctrines articulated and formulated by the great ecumenical councils of church history, including the doctrines of the Trinity and of Christ's person and work formulated at the councils of Nicea in 325 and of Chalcedon in 451."