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Higher charges will hit elderly
• LAST week the Lib Dems agreed their budget for the borough, acting as a good reminder of exactly what they are like.
Despite a good government increase, a 3.5 per cent rise in the tax base and high levels of reserves, the Lib Dems have decided to increase charges for the services older people use.
Meals-on-wheels will go up nearly 30 per cent – from £2.30 to £2.95 a meal. This will hit Islington’s most vulnerable and isolated residents.
At the same time, Lib Dem leaders continue to pay themselves the highest salaries in the country.
On the other hand, in our budget last week, Labour showed it is possible to keep council tax at the agreed level while offering the elderly the assistance they need and deserve.
We set aside nearly £500,000 to ensure that the elderly are able to access services and for additional money to voluntary groups who support them.
Clearly, the Lib Dems don’t care about helping Islington’s most vulnerable residents.
However, along with my Labour colleagues, I will keep pressing Islington council to start offering the services that residents want and need.
CLLR JOAN COUPLAND
(Labour)
Town Hall, N1
• WE would gladly pay more council tax than have Islington Council sell off shops and businesses that are the result of people’s hard work.
What we’d like to read, though, is the attitude of our MP towards Labour Chancellor Gordon Brown’s squeeze on local authority finances that is at the root of all the trouble.
Or is Eskimo Emily Thornberry still stuck in her igloo?
FLORENCE AND IVOR KENNA
Compton Street, EC1
• LAST week Islington councillors debated the Lib Dem administration’s budget for the coming year.
The Lib Dems’ headline was to spend £3 million of Islington tax-payers’ money on subsidising private solar panels and wind turbines. While we must tackle climate change, we must not forget that in the sixth-poorest borough in the UK we have other pressing problems.
Islington needs a council that will take action to help marginalised young people, to improve the lives of the vulnerable elderly, and to tackle crime and anti-social behaviour.
That’s why Islington Labour’s alternative budget proposed £500,000 to improve youth services and youth work in the most deprived areas, £500,000 to provide improved access for Islington’s elderly to lunch clubs and other social activities and £500,000 more to fund additional Safer Neighbourhoods teams at crime hotspots.
Budgets are about council priorities and about the vision and ambition we have for Islington. In their budget, the Liberal Democrats chose to put climate change ahead of all else. In doing so they failed to listen to residents’ other priorities, and failed to take seriously the need to invest to make Islington a safer and fairer place.
Islington residents want and need radical policies to tackle the borough’s problems as well as contributing to carbon reductions.
This budget is a missed opportunity, and proves that the Lib Dems lack the vision and ambition that Islington deserves.
CLLR DANIEL HULLS
(Labour, Tollington)
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