Where does all the money go?

[Knifeandforkwhocares]

Its really sad to see the swimming pools and libraries shutting down in N Lanarkshire. I know Local Authorities have had their funding slashed year upon year for the past decade while at the same time as having to grapple with ever increasing social care bills. But could someone please tell me what the SNP does with the central budget? They get approx £2k more than that raise in taxes for every person who lives in Scotland thanks to the Barnett formula, we have taxes that are far far higher than the rest of the UK. Why do we find ourselves in a situation where we cannot afford to keep vital community resources open? The rUK flushes money down the loo on HS2 but we get Barnett conseqentials for this. Where are the SNP flushing large chunks of money down the loo that rUK isn’t? I just don’t get it!

Holyrood have repeatedly cut LA budgets.

Meanwhile they have expensive legislation like Gender Reform to pay for. The costs of that are mounting.

There's also the implementation of the new Hate Crime Bill and the failed deposit return scheme. None of this is cheap.

https://www.heraldscotland.com/politics/23454662.grr-scotland-gender-reform-legal-fight-bill-could-500-000/

I am depressed about the libraries and leisure centres- without these it feels like we are hardly a developed country.

So much money just thrown down the drain and nothing to show for it.
Bunch of willy (& flag) waving wankers

I'm so annoyed at facilities going.

Free university education, baby boxes, free prescriptions. Free school lunches, free personal care. Free chromebooks, freebies galore.

Plus loads in Indy research and Indy ref planning. Lots of legal advice to fight with Westminster on things like gender recognition

That's where the money goes. SNP spends money on different things to test of uk.

Well , each will have highly paid directors, extensive finance/HR etc depts. Lots of duplication of jobs. These council staffing costs are huge and when I worked in one, a lot of staff were off on long term sick or petty useless.

Sorry, that was for @Sugarfree23. I thought I was replying to you. 🤦🏼‍♀️

The council top jobs waste a phenomenal amount of money. Perhaps some of these roles are worth the money; I'm not convinced many of them are.

Hmmmm we moved up from England last year and I’m pretty sure there were free school meals there.

Yes each council will have its own people in big ticket jobs. But combining the councils together will just make the hierarch bigger.

You still need the same number of HR staff to manage the day to day issues so making the numbers of people bigger will just add to the layers of management above them to get to the top guy.

Also when we had Strathclyde Region you also had the local District Councils.

Regional Councils ie Strathclyde covered, Roads, Education and Transport.

District Councils Monklands etc did Cleansing, sports & leisure, planning, housing

Not sure where things like Social Work sat

The day to day running of the Councils isn't were money is being thrown away. It's Holyroods hairbrained half though out stupid ideas and the money they are using to prep for independence - which will probably never happen.

Means tested, though? Scotland provides free meals up to P6, for all.

@ArabellaScott hmmm all I can say is we got free school meals for my son and it wasn’t means tested. I think it was universal (in London at least) till year 4 (P5) and I see from a quick Google the London mayor promised from Sept 23 free school meals for all. One thing I have noticed that our struggling east London primary served a much more varied and interesting menu than the school in Scotland my kids are now at. Here there is a lot of pasta and burgers!

Ah, you can have any meal you like, so long as its beige, Longwhiskers!

Means tested, though? Scotland provides free meals up to P6, for all

In England, free lunches are universal for children in reception, year one and year two.

Anecdotally, in Scotland by not much after that kids from families who can afford it start favouring packed lunches anyway as the portion size doesn't change.

My tiny P7 was happier with school lunch - hot food - than my lame sandwich offerings.
However I can well imagine some of the bigger kids would feel half starved. It does seem nuts to serve up the same portion to a tiny 4.5 year old as an adult sized 12 yo.

My kids did packed lunches because if they didn’t they wouldn’t get any time running around with their friends at lunch. Edinburgh schools have a half day Friday (one of the many examples of modern life where they assume only one parent works and the other can do a midday pick up) and the school hours to allow a half day Friday is made up by cutting down on the lunch break. Can’t afford the time to wait for school dinners.

The SNP wastes a lot of money on policies such as the bedroom tax, free prescriptions for all, free university tuition (generally regarded as a middle class bung), fee school dinners for all, ineffectual embassies etc, ferries especially expensive as they were built in Scotland. If these were individual policies would the majority of Scot’s vote for them? Not a chance!

And it's only going to get worse.
Aging populations, not just here but around the world are going to create real challenges and very hard choices. These aging populations are also a very powerful voting block due to numbers relative to other age groups.
What to do?
I don't know.
And I say all this as an older person.

https://www.thetimes.co.uk/article/f8816cb6-6080-11ee-977c-44b3e2b54888?shareToken=a5a6d114523ca83520285cf044e24a73
This might explain some of it

Is that the government creating more highly paid jobs for itself in its phenomenally expensive fancy headquarters, while the rest of the country watches libraries, swimming pools close, roads, rail and ferries collapse, health care struggle, and services get cut to the bone? Ffs.

Highly paid POINTLESS jobs, I should add.

@ArabellaScott kinda looks like that - what a surprise. Sooo much wasted on the gravy train