CHICAGO DUDES REACTION TO Why British Cities Keep Going Bankrupt

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CHICAGO DUDES REACTION TO Why British Cities Keep Going Bankrupt

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T what’s popping we are on Twitch we are live we are live but by the uh by the time you see this we won’t be so just leave a like comment subscribe turn on your post notification Bells let’s continue to grow the family from Chicago to the UK right behind me this is completely unnecessary we won’t need this but it’s here this is warning screen don’t forget if you do want to catch a live the lit one the username is at the B bottom of the screen twitch.com is where you can type it in and we got patreon we post five days a week and um the link to that is in the description below keep in mind my birthday is in 7 Days that’s tough salute to everybody who dropped the Dono on the twitch and the super thanks in the chats of the uh YouTubes I’m thanking y’all early uh this is why British cities keep going bankrupt this is Tom Nicholas this is his channel let me sub up hit that like button of course let’s get into it man copyright disclimer under Section 107 of the Copyright Act 1976 allowance is made for fair use for purposes such as criticism comment news reporting teaching scholarship and research fair use is a use permitted by copyright statute that might otherwise be infringing nonprofit educational or personal use tips the balance in favor of fair use no copyright infringement intended All rights belong to their respective owners my bad my birthday is in eight days my fauck eight days eight days from now today is the 20 today is the 18th so there’s the math for you this city just declared bankruptcy unless something changes in the UK pretty soon it’s unlikely to be the last what city you in the UK’s soon it’s unlikely to be the last I’m in Bur the UK’s second’s most popular City Birmingham just declar bankruptcy home of the peaky blinders Black Sabbath caby chocolate Aston Villa football club and a genuinely interesting Pen Museum Birmingham has long been a trend setting town but at the end of last summer it became a Pioneer in a slightly less desirable set when the city’s Council announced that it had gone busted a British City declaring itself bankrupt like this is usually an exceptionally rare event between 1988 and 2018 just two English councils ever found themselves in such a terrifying position Hackney did it too in the six years since however the number of cities falling into Financial turmoil has skyrocketed northamptonshire cuden not surprised Nottingham not surprised never heard of the rest of them except Birmingham I’m really surprised that Birmingham I did not know this six local councils have declared themselves effectively bankrupt since 2021 and it seems unlikely that they’ll be the last a recent survey by the local government Association found that nearly one in five Council Chiefs in England feared their council could simly run out of cash in the next 2 years I’ve blocked 4 days out my schedule booked three travel lodges and committ into driving an inadvisable distance in order to visit four British cities or counties which have recently gone bust and to try and figure out exactly what’s going wrong here as well as visiting one city which is experimenting with a whole new model of governance which can hopefully help cities to avoid a similar fate in the future oh he must be talking about the uh where everybody gets their own mayor instead of a big umbrella he must be talking about that I just learned about that you know what I’m saying I’m up on my UK politic things in that nature you know what I’m saying cuz I I honestly might move there I’m telling you when y’all see me out there making videos y going be like bro you live here yeah don’t worry about that [Music] though it’s quiet am I going down or is the video Plymouth he’s in Plymouth earlier that day okay it’s like a little movie morning so welcome to the car this will be our um be our home for the next uh 4 days uh three nights so we have sort of all the the basic features um five Wheels one for steering you know what’s crazy I had this video saved and ready to watch when it was 1 hour old and I I didn’t watch it yet I just wanted to let it you know what I’m saying do its thing uh now it’s that’s [Music] enough so here’s the plan over the next 3 days we’re going to be visiting four cities and counties all of which have gone broke over the last few years we’re driving up to Birmingham down to Northampton share back up to Nottingham across to Liverpool which hasn’t gone bankrupt but I’ll explain why later way back down to woking and then well I’ve got an additional surprise destination for day three but I’m going to keep that under wraps for now why would he do it in such a manner like this why would he go to walking first whatever I’m not going to lie I am a little bit apprehensive of how much driving I’ve got to do over the next few days as well as whether we can try and squeeze in or the filming we want to do in each location with the time that we’ve got but trying to tell this story from like behind my desk back at home didn’t feel like it would quite capture the scale of the crisis that British cities are currently facing so you decided to get your foot to the meal pedal to the meal and go outside I salute that type of Journalism or whatever we would call this okay the Sun is up we’ve had some breakfast we are on the M5 and have avoided accidentally getting the bridge to South Wales and next up Birmingham how long of a drive is that it look long on that [Music] map with the council being uh bankrupt they’re saying that now youth clubs are you know not get opened and I think it’s just detrimental to the youth bust that’s especially in Birmingham it’s going to be detrimental to the youth if if if if local if things that keep the youth occupied are not there anymore it’s going to oh yeah crime ratees going to shoot up out of pure boredom it’s going to shoot up you know what I’m saying every action has a reaction so you got to choose you got to pick and choose where your money is put like where the rest of the money is going towards I’m curious and then I think it’s just detrimental to the youth buses as well cuz they’re heavily parked like the other day um I’m fasting and I left jior about 2 hours early to get home on time and I was on the bus for about an hour and a half when usually it should take 25 minutes and that was really exhausting they’re talking about the beans go collections going from one week to two weeks so it’s like it’s the little things that you’re starting to notice that it’s it just makes me a bit sad this structure behind me is the Alexander Stadium the largest purpose-built athletic Stadium anywhere in the UK okay just two years ago this Arena played host to the opening ceremony of the Commonwealth Games a kind of offbrand Olympics for ex-members of the British Empire and Birmingham was a fitting choice for such an event not only does it have a rich history as one of the crucibles of Britain’s industrial revolution this is why I like Birmingham because of his history it’s very similar to Chicago’s when as far as like industrial type situations the steady stream of global migration to the city has made it one of Europe’s most diverse in lead the Comm games Birmingham city council’s then leader Ian Ward a promised the event will kick off what he described as a golden decade of opportunity for the city inviting all kinds of new jobs opportunities and investment but whatever optimism might have buzzed through the city during those two weeks of pval and pentathlon it’s safe to say those grander promises now ring pretty Hollow I’m Juni P I’m a green party counselor presenting the board of Dr teeth and money Hall which in the south of Birmingham B city council is often said said it’s the biggest local Authority in Europe certainly it covers the biggest population certainly definitely in the UK council is labor runs so labor have a majority on city council um so I’m in opposition I mean I don’t think any of my ward gets a good deal to be honest out the council we’re now potentially even going to lose even more um so we we have a library um and we have a youth center potentially might lose both of those see back in September 2020 that’s crazy what’s more detrimental for the Youth to lose the library the opportunity to to ingest un un unbothered amounts of knowledge or or the youth center it’s both a crazy thing to lose and I say that to say I’ve never even been in a library as an adult 23 Birmingham city council’s Director of Finance uploaded this letter to the city’s website this document is what’s called a section 114 notice and it is in effect a financial distress signal in publishing a section 114 notice the city was forly notifying the UK central government in Westminster that its projected income for the coming year in taxes and other Revenue was not able to cover the cost of its projected outgoings the consequences of admitting Financial defeat in this way are pretty dire here in Birmingham residents are preparing for an unprecedented 21% hike in local property taxes to try and dig the city out of its Financial hole but how did the city get into this financial hole you know what I’m saying like who mismanaged the city’s money or Council run services are being cut to the bone this ranges from a 100% cut to all Arts funding in the city to a slashing of the support given to children and their families to dimming Street lamps to try and save on electricity and it’s not like Council Services were being lavishly funded around here to begin with in fact one Council equipped last month that amid brutal cuts to bin Collections and youth centers the next decade was unlikely to be golden for anyone but rats and gangsters 100% you’re not lying this is a this is a pretty great statement I mean not great statement but it’s a pretty accurate statement cuz that’s the exact thought that came in my here this it’s going to be G it’s going to be great for the gangs now we’ve got you know several million Cuts Worth to the library budget yeah as I said potentially all the libraries to find the city there’s 36 at the moment and they are going to potentially close up to 25 of those so there’ll be 11 left it would be a you know we will be losing something you know the council is you know we’re supposed to be about about trying to create neighborhoods and communities and and investing in areas and do you take stuff out then that makes it little harder to do so how did Birmingham go from such dazzling highs to such Bleak lows in such a short period of time that’s a good question why is financial turmoil here caused anxieties in Council buildings across the country okay assuming I’m able to navigate the incredibly confusing roads that is good by Birmingham there are a couple of events unique to Birmingham which have caused it to implode in quite such a spectacular fashion the section 114 letter which officially announced the city’s ins soleny placed the blame squarely on a series of equal pay disputes brought against the sizy council by current and former employees over the past 15 years the city has repeatedly been found to have upheld discriminatory pay practices which caused women to be paid less than men God come on Birmingham is 2024 how you still how did this still happening and having already paid out over1 billion pounds in settlements it was suggested that the outstanding 760 million the city is still estimated to owe was the key reason for the council going bus this narrative has since come under question in March accountant and academic James Brackley to put that in perspective that unequal pay discriminatory pay uh discrepancies were the reason that Birmingham went into bankruptcy wrote a piece for the conversation based on an extensive review he’ undertaken of Birmingham city council’s finances Brackley found that the real reason for birmingham’s immediate financial turmoil was the fumbled implementation of a new accounting and HR System by the American company Oracle not only did migrating to the new hold on why does it come back to America what we got to Oh my days I remember Oracle though they handled some of when I last worked they handled some of our stuff too new Oracle Software System end up costing more than three times what was initially quoted but the software itself was highly dysfunctional yeah yeah so no they okay so we were going to switch over to Oracle and we ended up not doing it they’re still with the like I talked to people that still work there they’re still with the same um system as when I was there this was like 5 years ago they never did it so we they wherever I worked dodged that bullet the all the whole of Birmingham did not though that’s tough at points Council staff basically had no idea how much money was going out and coming in with these events in mind it’s tempting to View birmingham’s financial collapse as solely the result of mismanagement on the part of council leadership Michael Gove the member of the UK central government in charge of overseeing local councils did just that blaming birmingham’s bankruptcy on quote poor leadership weak governance and woeful mismanagement of employee relations nevertheless whilst bad decision making was clearly a factor in pushing Birmingham over the edge the idea that the city’s insolvency is only a product of compensation claims and bad computer systems begins to crumble the moment that we place birmingham’s troubles into wider context okay because as I mentioned at the top of this video Birmingham is not the first city here in the UK appreciate the follow MRG the most recent Mr gamer one Northampton Shire we already going here [Music] so it’s worth me acknowledging that the place we’re currently in North Hampton Shire is not a city in fact it is very much a rural County but the ways these things are governed in the UK is remarkably similar I’ll explain a bit more about it later but just go with it now please it was from here in Northampton sh we got the first sign that things might not be entirely Rosy in the world of British local government in 2018 18 the County Council here became the third English Council ever to issue a section 114 notice announcing itself effectively bankrupt the fact that 18 years had passed since Hackney had been the most recent place to do so meant that it was easy to view this as a pretty exceptional event the government commission tasked with investigating Northampton yeah I’m interest nor this is a rural area how did that happen council’s failure cracked out all their Microsoft Office skills to blame its insolvency on hubris on the part of local politicians and Council staff since then however the catastrophes have kept piling up Cen slau thork woking Birmingham and most recently Nottingham have all announced they’ve run out of cash in the past two years and even in cities which remain in the black for now leaders award but that situation is so my fa d Queen in the black for now leaders are warning that their situation is so dire we might soon be facing quote the end of a local government in the UK while there might be unique circumstances involved in all of these cases then there clearly something much larger going on here but to understand that we first need to take a little look at how local government here in the UK works but that’s a job for tomorrow because I am absolutely knackered wait couldn’t couldn’t this be like aftermath of exiting the EU as well you know what I’m saying or no this is Nottingham the next day always women died together see y’ see this is the difference between me and other reactors first of all other reactors are not watching this that’s first and foremost and and be like listen hear me out hear me out they don’t retain information like I do y’all be thinking I don’t be paying attention but look right now as I recite everything that I’ve ever learned about politics in the UK and what’s going on on the day-to-day basis see I don’t just one ear out the other my reactions I listen I retain I I gather information and it’s stored and when I be trying to tell y’all I’m a genius I’m a genius in my own right you get me that is the vote we always vote yeah I think I think the vote’s very important yeah uh people are given a lot of time and effort and sum their lives I suppose over the years to guarantee what we can do today I’ve never voted no no and they all think of the themselves hold on wait we got to run out of cash they don’t think of was well probably the one I vote for not go in but it certainly not be the main parties mhm because I don’t rate them for the local election we always go for the same people because they’re so good to our area they’re so supportive you can email them they’ll try and do something for you so we didn’t actually plan to film this video um like mere weeks out from a local election uh here in the UK this video has been on the cards for ages we just happens to make it now but we’ve been in Nottingham City Center this morning challing to people about whether they’re planning on voting um how enthusiastic they are about that what kind of issues really matter to them and it’s been a really interesting few hours we’ve heard like a real range of opinions about people who um aren planning on voting all about people who believe it is a kind of fundamental civic duty that they should people who are really angry at the council people who absolutely have got these really heartwarming stories of counselors um helping them out which has been really lovely too but in order to get on with the next as a as a as a this is my whole thing man as a as a taxpaying citizen anywhere that that is a that is a situation you can’t go into this with a heart oh but they do oh but they no I’m going in here as a strategic businessman if you’re not going to benefit me personally I don’t know it’s a no it’s a no and I don’t care about your family I don’t care about nothing else I don’t care about what you’ve done you know what I’m saying are you going to benefit me personally at the end of the day are you going to benefit me personally and do and what is what you do aligning with what I think this is very simple part of the video I first need to come good on my promise to explain exactly how local government here in the UK works I’m in Nottingham just to the north of where we finished off yesterday’s journey of all the cities we’re visiting on this little road trip Nottingham was the most recent to declare itself effectively bankrupt and it’s also the one which begins to point to the larger issues of play here unlike Birmingham or Northampton share Nottingham hasn’t Fallen any great financial Calamity there are no error prone computers or Council hubris here and yet the city has still managed to go bus like most countries the UK has multiple tiers of government with different entities having different powers and responsibilities depending on where they sit in the hierarchy if that sounds fairly orderly it’s not in fact the whole system is so wildly inconsistent to the point that depending on where one lives in the UK one might might be blessed with as few as two layers of government to deal with or as many as four where I live down in Plymouth political governance is divided up between just two bodies matters of national importance are decided upon by the central government in London whil local matters are overseen by Plymouth city council nice and simple if however you’re lucky enough to live in the picturesque Village of denme and Southeast England various decisions affecting your life we broken up between the denm parish council the Winchester City Council the Hampshire County Council and only then the UK Parliament you get that seems like a headache living there to vote for Representatives trying to get anything done all of those bodies and if you have any issues you have the additional fun of trying to work out which of those four Representatives has the power to do anything about it to make matters even more confusing some areas of England such as Nottingham here have recently become part of what are called combined authorities this involves neighboring City or burrow or County councils working together to coordinate transport and economic development plans often under the aaces of a regional mayor in London this is actually taken a step further in the form of the greater London Authority led by the London mayor the GL has strategic responsibility for Life across London’s 32 burs despite each of those burough having considerable day-to-day autonomy in their own rights meanwhile Wales Scotland and Northern is land have their own National parliaments which in those countries form a separate layer of government between local government and central government in London and this is before we even begin to talk about the nine administrative English regions which are used for some statistical purposes or local my God I used to think when I was in high school that we had we had it bad when it came to figuring out who could do what and and what how politics works the house of this the house of that this this is a headache I would never pass this class whatever class this is located in in school out there I wouldn’t pass it local police and crime Commissioners all that being said most people in the UK will have either one or two local councils which serve as their primary forms of local government is that the t- bell I mean it’s incredibly cool those councils might be called City councils or District Council or bur councils or County councils depending on their size and how rural or Urban they are but whether or not they have a strategic body such as a combined Authority above them or a voluntary Parish or Town Council which sits beneath will usually be one or two bodies which have the largest impact on their lives but what exactly is it that a local Council does the role of City burough District or County councils here in the UK then is very similar to that of City governments in other countries the central government in Westminster retains ains the power to issue currency set trade policy and start and end Wars while local councils are in charge of operating on the ground services such as housing Waste Management libraries Parks Street Maintenance and certain social Care and Family Support Services so thought you’d bring you to some kind of council amenity for our second bit of filming in Nottingham and we’ve come to not on MAR burum which is apparently the inspiration for Neverland in uh JM Peter Pan see in the UK central government actually has a pretty big say in how local councils run the areas they’re responsible for for one councils actually don’t get a huge amount of choice in what services they provide if you look down a list of services which tend to be provided by city and county councils in the UK you’ll find that some what’s called discretionary services this means they’re provided entirely at the council’s own initiative that’s [ __ ] While most Council one glorious public park that’s insane what do you mean that’s your discretion so whatever day you feel like it all right While most councils will run glorious public parks like this one Leisure centers and museums to uplift local histories there’s nothing to say that they have to other than the fear that local residents might vote them out if they don’t other services however what are referred to as statutory Services well you have this means that the central government in London has passed legislation which requires councils to provide those they’re not required to do a lot organized elections housing advice okay waste collection all right street cleaning taxi licensing building control that’s six oh okay well it’s only so seven that they don’t have to do car parking funding for voluntary art organized public park maintenance public toilets Leisure centers local museums so everything fun is an option Services by law local authorities for example are legally required to provide free bin collections they have a legal responsibility to maintain roads and Pavements and they have a duty to provide welfare and safeguarding services for children and vulnerable adults councilors might have a reasonable degree of flexibility and exactly how they provide these services that they can’t simply choose not to in fact if you drive through a pothole in the UK and it damages your car you’re often entitled to claim compensation from the council responsible for that road for failing to keep it in a good enough state of repair this requirement to so that’s the same as in Chicago or actually I was I I had lived in a suburb called ski I was in a they do they do that as well I filed it and never got it I’m talking this is 10 years maybe longer ago never received any compensation provide a minimal level of service is probably a good thing turnout at local elections in the UK is depressingly low and so it’s probably good to have a defense against some mad libertarian taking over a city and deciding to just let vulnerable kids sleep on the street or something the problem is is that all of this stuff costs money when it comes to raising funds to pay either for these core services or for discretionary services the councilors might want to provide for local residents on top of them local governments have even less power but if we’re going to make tonight’s Travel Lodge we should probably talk about that one on the road to our next destination this next stop is actually a bit of a detour but I think it’s really important to visit if we’re going to tell this whole story properly I mean I don’t know if I’ve explained how much I dislike driving yet but yeah I stop if I didn’t feel it was important so there are four ways in which city burough and county councils in the UK generate money the first is what in England Scotland and Wales is called council tax and what in Northern Ireland is called rates these are both property taxes calculated based on the value of the property in which a resident lives so everybody plays Council flat I mean like property tax even if you’re renting or no cuz if you own a building out here in America you got to pay property tax but if you’re renting I’m pretty sure that’s calculated into your rent and they take it out and they do what they no whatever the rent is the rent is they save their money and go pay the the property tax later the the private owner there one charge for everyone who lives in a particular property but there are discounts for people who live alone depending on where you live in the country and how fancy your houses counil tax might be as low as £ 763 a year for a cupboard in the city of London or over 5,000 for a mansion in rotland I think a lot of people understandably assume the count in Chicago you could pretty much guarantee that it was a one rate it’s like 10 bands I don’t know something like that covers a sizable portion of the cost of running a local government this is actually far from the case if we take the example of Stafford CH County Council whose jurisdiction we’re currently driving through we find that council tax accounted for just 37% of the body’s income in the year 2023 to 2024 a further 10% came from business rates which is another property tax which is similar to council tax but which is charged to businesses with premises within a council’s jurisdiction offices shops factories warehouses bars and cafes can all be liable to pay business rates which are calculated based on the rental value of a given unit as with council tax however there are again discounts for smaller businesses and for Charities an equally poultry 6.5% came from what’s labeled other in this will include a wide range of income streams from services that the council charges for car parking taxi licenses commercial waste collection hire of council buildings for weddings and events all of these Services come with a charge and therefore generate direct income for the council now the math heads among you would have noticed that these figures don’t come even close to hitting 100% And that’s because a full 46.5% of the council’s revenue doesn’t come from locally raised taxes on residents or businesses but from Grants provided to it from central government some of these government grants are pre-assigned and ring Fen for certain Services more than half of the money that staff AER receives from central government for example comes in the form of the dedicated schools Grant and this has to be spent on schools the council can’t simply decide to skimp on schooling in order to spend some of that money on something else instead other grants from the government will be more flexible with council’s being able to allocate money as it sees fit depending on local priorities there are some obvious benefits to such a huge chunk of local coun s incomes coming through central government spatial inequality runs deep in the UK the median weekly pay for a full-time employee in London is £ 796 whereas in North wait for how much say it again spatial inequality runs deep in the UK the median weekly pay for a full-time employee in London is £ 796 that’s weekly what did he say weeky what does that mean what does that mean hey come on now that is this does he mean 796 lbs a week I need answers before I continue because I need to understand what’s happening let’s press pause if so that’s that’s 796 for four for a 40h hour week is that what we you saying whereas in Northeast England it’s just 614 capturing tax through income tax and the like then Distributing it outward to local councils at least theoretically gives central government the power to soften the effects of this imbalance that’s not to say they act on that power as much as they should but they at least could if they want it nevertheless the combination of such a large chunk of local council’s funding coming from central government alongside the fact that that same central government also gets to tell councils what services they should prioritize through that system of statutory Services begins to place a big question mark over how autonomous local councils really are all of which would make politicians in London seeking to place the blame for British cities going bankrupt entirely on City governments seem a bit questionable because rather than an unfortunate accident this enfeeblement of local councils by the central government is very much by Design and our next stop will be able to show us why going to the pool I’m in Liverpool where it is incredibly incredibly windy Liverpool has long maintained a slightly distinct political identity to much of the rest of England never was this clearer than in the 1980s throughout the course of that decade the UK as a whole Thrice elected Mar fer when a platform of cutting taxes and reducing public expenditure many in Liverpool however remained deeply skeptical in fact in 1983 the city went in the complete opposite direction to the rest of the country by voting in a city council led by militant a leftwing faction within the labor party which couldn’t have been more opposed to Thatcher if they tried where Thatcher sought to open up every aspect of national life to the free market militant sought to overthrow it in time this animosity came to a head a year later when Thatcher’s government introduced legislation which placed a limit on the amount of tax local councils could raise from their residents this served the conservatives agenda in two ways not only did it reduce people’s taxes but by limiting the amount of money councils had available to spend it forced councils to streamline services and thus further reduced the role of the state in people’s everyday lives militant L Liverpool had other ideas rather than reducing their spending the city council unveiled an ambitious program of activity in which they pledged to build new houses open new sports centers and provide a greater number of Nursery places for local children how did that work out Cally the cost of all this required the council to set a budget in which their expenditure exceeded the income they were due to receive through government grants or through newly capped taxes this was and is legal for a city council to do nevertheless local leaders adopted the slogan that it it would be Liverpool to do it though it’s always Liverpool it was better to break the law than break the poor by allowing the city facts to drift into decline Trend sets the response from the political establishment was swear the council’s Hope had been that central government would be forced to plug the financial gap in the council’s budget budget but thater refused to do so the labor party who on the national level were under the firmly Centrist leadership of Neil kinck enthusiastically denounced the council as foolish idealists and suspended the politicians responsible if that jur had already been Keen to curb the power of local government the Liverpool Rebellion only emboldened her further her tenure was one of sweeping reductions to the role and agency of local councils alongside caps on local taxes that also reduced council’s Powers over schools and forced them to sell off huge quantities of social housing this war on local government was partly an economic Crusade but as the standoff with militant Liverpool highlights there were political motivations at play she was not with the uh she basically said if you broke deal with it fix it yourself no more funding no more IDE the relationship between local government and national government be one of mutual cooperation but local politicians ever since have tended to view local councils as inherent obstacles to change after all it’s no fun sweeping to power with some great vision for how you’re going to change the country only to have that Vision frustrated by a bunch of disagreeable counselors in Liverpool or Su or anywhere else when the conservatives were outed in the late 1990s is telling that the incoming labor government under Tony Blair didn’t proceed to roll back thatches reforms while they did increase Local Government funding this came with strings attached in the form of targets and so-called performance indicators which councils had to meet to appease Westminster the lesson learned from Thatcher’s tenure was clear that local government needed to be constrained and controlled but more on that when we reach our final destination tomorrow morning Northwest any so travel L dang this lot of foliage going on okay this is our Travel Lodge for night two um the third one is actually for the the the end of the third day um and I thought I’d let you into this one because this one comes with its very own podcasting Studio really weird why is there not a couch in here done interviews in here like so what’s your thoughts on um uh local councils struggling for cash oh well um I think I think this and that and that and actually I think it’s like this it’s I really think um Travel Lodge could rebuild itself as a kind of Studio of some description okay it’s actually not raining you could very easily do a podcast right there he’s oning something which is something oh no it is okay every time I put my head up it yeah he me stops raining and every time I take it down again [Music] right let’s get going oh the paral shelf’s got stuck so with my ability to see out my rearview mirror restored we had it back down across the breadth of England to our final destination woking we are getting far closer to London than I usually like to be it kind of feels like it’s correct towards the end of the video to kind of be approaching the corridors of power of course they did why would they why would they accept that anything that could potentially paint them in a bad light not happening woking in February 2009 future Prime Minister of the UK David Cameron wrote an opinion piece for the guardian which in itself seems kind of ludicrous now this call back to an Era when conservatives at least occasionally had to pretend to be liberal technocrats in the article Cameron promised that if he were elected his government would lead a program of quote radical decentralization to reach every core corner of the country he claimed to have acknowledged the extent to which previous governments have reduced the powers of local councils and to be promising a dramatic reversal of that trend on the surface Cameron’s government did appear to come good on this promise reduce the powers of local councils to be promising a dram Matic reversal of that trend on the surface Cameron’s government did appear to come good on this promise and I was muted wasn’t I I said this is probably one of the most cringest handshakes I ever seen I got I got to get it off you know what I’m saying local councils to be promising who shakes with a left hand who leads with the left isn’t shaking left-handed Le disrespectful like that’s what it’s looked at it a dramatic reversal of that TR CR on the surface Cameron’s government did appear to come good on this promise to name just one example he pushed for a further rolling out of so-called Metro Mayors to provide strong identifiable leaders for Regions and cities outside London and this initiative has had more than a little success in Manchester labor mayor Andy Burnham has been able to bring local buses back under City control to improve support for people sleeping rough and to develop plans to introduce a new city accredited education pathway for local young people who want to enter technical careers while mayor’s Devolution deals and other less shiny reforms theoretically increase the autonomy of local government however the matter of money remains and in this the succession of conservative Prime Ministers which have held power since 2010 have been far less generous in fact according to the institute for government core funding for local councils was cut by 40% between 2009 and 2020 whatever Powers local councils might theoretically have gained then they’ve been left with little cash to actually do much with these new abilities the whole system so it’s trickery so they still a puppet hey we got to give you the money but you ain’t got none you ain’t getting none so you can take these new power but what you going to do what you going to fund it with statutary and discretionary Services has begun to look ridiculous his councilors have been forced to cut anything which isn’t legally mandated to the Bone budgets for Park maintenance for example have been slashed by a third funding for local Arts organizations has dropped by 40% 60% of public L across the country have been closed and nearly 400 swimming pools in England have been shut down even where councils do legally have to provide a service they’ve often had to reduce that provision to the bare minimum providing a library service might be a legal requirement but the law is pretty vague about what that service needs to look like as such hundreds upon hundreds of libraries have been closed over the past decade and others have been reduced to minimal opening times simil Council youth centers which used to cater to a wide range of young people now have to focus their efforts on children who are already in need of intervention things were really brought to a head however by Co where Council budgets were already stretched the pandemic introduced all kinds of new responsibilities which sent their outgoing soaring at the same time his income through taxes and revenue generating services like car Parks took a nose done while the government did occasionally provide some additional funding to councils during this period it was rarely enough to cover the shortfall and after years of austerity there simply isn’t much left to cut in January the BBC reported that UK councils were shouldering a collective debt of 97.8 billion at time of recording however central government has refused to provide any additional financial support Chancellor of the ex cheer Jeremy Hunt has instead suggested that Council should cut back on diversity and inclusion schemes which given birmingham’s bankruptcy was at least partly the result of of the council there upholding widespread pay discrimination is maybe a little inadvisable elsewhere ministers have allowed councils to sell off assets such as land community centers Leisure centers and town halls to try and cover the shortfall in their day-to-day spending which really exposes the heart of what’s going on here for the past decade conservative politicians have talked endlessly about the decentralization of power first it was localism then Devolution deals then leveling up by ruthlessly starving councils of cash however Cameron May Johnson truss and sunac have essentially for forced councils of all political Stripes to follow a ruthless agenda of cost cutting privatizations and sell-offs and the more local assets that are sold off the more services that are transferred into private hands the worse things are likely to get but despite how Grim things are and they are pretty Grim I didn’t want to leave this video on an entirely depressing note honestly that seems like like on on some fin for yourself we going to starve you out type situation and then since y’all want all this power for local local all right cool cool cool reap what you s just remember stand on it then that’s basically what they saying stand on that so we’re going to round off our trip with with something of a bonus stand on it while we take your feet from under you which is trying to do things a little bit differently in a way which doesn’t completely ameliorate the effects of economic downturns or government funding Cuts but does at least seek to bring wealth and most importantly power back to local communities welcome to Preston pron is a relatively small city of around 150,000 people in Northwest England and we’ll admit we cheated a bit here we’re actually filming this on the morning of day three before we go to woking but it felt like a horrific waste of carbon to drive all the way down to working only need to drive all the way back up to Preston and then to drive all the way back down to the Glorious Southwest to go home but nevertheless welcome to Preston to understand what Preston’s been doing differently over the past few years and why it’s help with first to understand some of the KnockOn effects which the various privatizations and sell-offs which the central government has been encouraging councils to perform have on a place imagine you run a council and that Council employs a big team of waste collection staff folks who get up early in the morning to drive big lorries around town and collect everyone’s bins if you directly employ that team then a large chunk of the money that you pay them in wages will get spent locally in your town on buying food and going to the cinema and doing Escape rooms and whatever else it is that your fictional waste collection team are doing in their spare time but but now imagine that you privatize that service by which I mean handing it over to a private company to run for profit a few things happen the first is that the company will likely look to quote unquote streamline the service being provided to cut costs as the now privatized Royal Mail has been petitioning to do by abandoning Saturday post deliveries the second is that they’ll likely look to employ a new waste collection team on supposedly quote unquote more competitive terms terms I.E for Less pay or at the very least less secure contracts the third is that all that money that save through this cost cutting becomes profit which first gets deposited into the bank account of the company which now provides that service and then gets distributed to that company’s shareholders particularly where contracts are handed to a big company like biffer or verdor both of which are owned by American investment firms what happens is that some of that money which was previously America controls y garbage being paid to local employees who would then spend at least some of it in local shops and bars and bowling alleys is now leaving the area entirely since 2013 however the city council here in Preston have been experimenting with a new approach to City governance which has come to be known as the Preston model or more broadly as Community wealth building my name is Martin Rollins and I’m the deputy leader of the council I’m also in charge of the finances it’s a really tough landscape local government right now and has been for a number of years and he’s not really getting any easier uh the finances are very tight 50% CTS we we’ve got half the staff that we used to have half the money we called it a furnus agenda at the beginning it got labeled the Preston model by the former Shadow Chancellor John McDonald some years ago and that’s stuck we looked at what we were spending uh whether we were spending it in Preston or nearby and we also got all the local anchor institutions which are public bodies which are never going to leave Preston you know the hospital the university the police the colleges housing associations we got them involved we got them to look up where they were spending their money and it turns out they weren’t spending very much in Preston or or nearby so we we developed a program whereby we encouraged uh this and we doubled our spending in the local economy between 2013 and 15 uh and we looked at all the anchor institutions and they’ increased their spending and we tra keep the money in house that’s the best that is a good way to do it keep all the money inh housee buddy you doing this you doing that all right we’ll do it through us that way the money recirculates through us an extra 70 million in the Preston economy lots of these bodies are spending more money in Preston and the locality it the money circulates that little bit longer in the locality fact that it’s in local people’s pockets for longer the money means they decide where it goes next that’s what democratizing wealth means um whereas if it if it very quickly filters upwards to shareholders and and wealthy people then that choice is gone we we have no choice when when or if that money ever comes back alongside that we’ve started to use our assets for public good so we’re building uh a huge Cinema complex which um you know the private sector will not come in and do it in the city center so we’re we’re doing it on our land we keep the land um when it’s all paid for it will be our building publicly owned public wealth that will still be ours and we’ll have an S worth x amount that will belong to the people of Preston and not the shareholders who you know that would normally have been the model every penny we spend every asset we’ve got all the work we do directly benefits Preston then we not benefits some sureh holder thousands of miles away none of this is a silver bullet to the problem of reduced funding from Central can you imagine somewhere Community wealth building here in Preston is seeing the council trying to leverage it definitely be a Fallout somewhere what power and resources it does have to improve the quality of jobs and services in the city where many other British cities and Counties have been pushed by 14 years of Tory rule into a vicious cycle of cuts and layoffs and sell-offs and Civic decline Preston perhaps points to what could be possible if local governments were given the power and resources they perhaps need so making this video has felt like a real step up not only have we added Fox pops and interviews to our repertoire but sping four days on the road has been a pretty big undertaking this so this is his first time doing this type type situation hasn’t only been the most logistically complex of any of the videos that we’ve made but almost certainly the most expensive too I hope all the added but it was very very enlightening and it was well done though like me coming out of here me watching from America like I got it I got the point because you did it this way if you would have just put a bunch of pictures on a computer screen I wouldn’t have you know what time and energy and I would have did my best but resource that we put into it has come across in the final product if you want to find out a little bit more about how this actual road trip portion of the process I don’t to leave a like comment subscribe turn on your post notification Bells good stuff