Building debt

Sometimes the government’s representative in South Swindon, Ms Snelgrove, is so keen to slag off the blue nest controlled council that she ignores what she’s quoting her own ministers as saying. Take, for instance, today’s announcement that the government’s adding another £122.6M to the national debt to fund the building of more council houses. Ms Snelgrove would have us believe that the council needs to do more.

The Council’s housing waiting list is now over 10,000 which is completely unacceptable and they need to start matching the Government’s support to tackle this problem.

Err… matching the ‘Government’ support (i.e. taxpayer support) is a condition of the scheme, and as the council had to bid to government for the money, is something they’ve already committed to.

John Healey announced 73 councils covering every region of England will share an extra £122.6 million. Councils will match the Government’s grant, bringing total public investment in the programme to over £500m to build more than 4,000 new council homes

Oddly although Ms Snelgrove included that in her press release, she chose to ignore Mr Healey’s compliment to the winning councils.

Councils have shown they’re ready and willing to build new homes, so I’m ready to back them.

The government’s representative in South Swindon, Ms Snelgrove, is always quick to criticise the council when their bids to government are unsuccessful. In contrast, when the council is successful… she’s still full of criticism. I’m not daft enough to expect politicians to present an unbiased view; I do expect them to keep their political point scoring consistent with the facts.