To chortle my face off at this fucking farce from Reform

[Salemsplot]

https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2025/oct/18/suck-it-up-leaked-video-exposes-bitter-infighting-at-reform-uks-flagship-kent-council

But in seriousness, imagine these kind of people running your council, let alone your country…

Brexit passed in a Conservative Government. But it's Reforms fault. LOL.

I'm glad the local government reforms will get rid of KCC and divide it into unitary authorities.

Done be daft @Smilersam. Farage instigated the whole thing. After he’d got himself an EU passport, naturally.

^this
Conservatives no better.

Great to see supporters of Farage’s vanity project aren’t bothered by basic competence in their politicians 😂

Of course YANBU OP. Scary stuff.

Ha that principle would have stopped Labour winning any election.

Or maybe they should be judged on how the people in Kent are served and how they meet their responsibilities. Whatever you say, this is not the way to behave in a meeting where you need the commitment and support of colleagues.

they really are not. Some of them are, but there are a lot of local councillors who work extremely hard for little reward.

Are you having an offline bet on how many times you can use the word ‘sadly’?

Well the EHCP process for one. We can’t afford such expensive plans for so many children plus taxis. I think it is in hand though

But the majority of Kent won’t have a high level ‘legal responsibility’ owed to them by the council, they’re just sick of paying £££ council tax to see it being funnelled off toward a small number of people while their bins go uncollected

May I suggest anyone who thinks this isa bit fanciful starts watching series3 of Babylon Berlin ( tremendous drama series by the way) - shows exactly how it all started- series3 starts in 1929 and wall st crash - basically it initially starts as getting some order back then things that the Nazis don’t like get stopped, people get ‘removed’ and go missing, people stop offering opinions, they make sure their own people are in charge at police , local gvt etc, - it all starts though very innocently by getting people to feel resentful and snitch on each other - it wasa total power grab by a load of inadequates basically with no talent or innovation - just weirdo bully boys who sensed an opportunity

No other party is going to be honest about the fact we have been overspending now for decades.

have we? maybe we need to increase taxes to pay for the essentials then, like social care and SEND education - not cut everything even further

can you explain what you mean by a small number of people? and are the bins not being collected in Kent? serious questions as I would like to understand better

Taxes are already incredibly high. We can’t just keep taxing people indefinitely to pay for SEN and social care as the taxpayer is already increasingly begrudging and there are other areas of need. SEN spending has risen year on year now and is at its highest level ever and it would be reasonable to spend yet even more on it. SEN has had its fair share and then some.

Yes, in some areas 60p in every £1 of council tax is spent on social care/SEN. This is incredibly high and is because they legally overpromised what individuals are entitled to, which they are now having to row back on. Other council funded areas such as road maintenance, bin collection, public libraries and so on are all suffering as all the money is ploughed into meeting legal requirements for social care. There’s no legal requirement to keep a library open

They are like Trump, so ridiculous that you can’t believe anyone takes them seriously.

I wonder who leaked that!

I am going to use “chortle my face off” going forward though.

No it has not . It has been and is massively underfunded. The harder it is to access SEND support the worse problems get. Historic underfunding in education and SEND has increased need and we do not want even more children dropping out of school without an education. It’s really bad for society and costs more in the long run. The education and SEND system given to us by the Tories is shite and broken. Richer families are accessing provision far more than poorer families and there is a huge post code lottery..

I like in Kent and I am appalled at these incompetent fools.

It just shows as well that Reform and Farage don't have the experience, ethics or skills needed to run a country...

This is absolutely correct. The people who don’t get the right support in school end up being much bigger drains on society- and quite dangerous in some cases. So it’s obviously the right thing to support them early on. But it’s not being done right at the moment and hence one reason why it’s so expensive. For example one of the things that happens is there are few specialist centres and so children need to be taxied there - enormously expensive and a very visible cost.

As a Kentishman living in exile, I have to say my home county deserves all it gets. Sorry guys, that's how it is.

I think the whole SEN issue has been incredibly badly managed; as has the social care area. And this is by the conservative govt of the last 14 years. Hence we are paying more for less. The bringing in lower taxes argument is always going to fail in this country- we actually need higher taxes (and we pay some of the lowest rates in Europe).

We now have the higher taxes we have ever had. We cannot afford the welfare system as it stands. We cannot afford to support the 6.5 million adults on out of work benefits. Something has to change, the welfare state needs big cuts.

Which is not what this thread is about. This thread is about how inadequate and incapable Reform are as a party let alone running the country.

We shot outselves in the foot enough with Brexit, letting Reform run anything is simply complete utter madness .