The Daily Record’s Paul Hutcheon claims:
Humza Yousaf’s council tax gamble helps the wealthy and does nothing for the poor
https://www.dailyrecord.co.uk/news/politics/humza-yousafs-council-tax-gamble-31210722
It’s a quick little-researched stab derived from an anti-SNP starting point.
In 2020, the Institute for Fiscal Studies put a bit more intellectual elbow into and concluded that the Conservative Party’s council tax freeze, beginning in 2010, would lead to these outcomes, illustrated in the graph above:
The biggest beneficiaries in proportional terms are those in the middle of the income distribution and those at the very bottom. Many poorer people gain little or not at all, because council tax benefit would have largely or entirely insulated them from the impact of the council tax increase that would have occurred in the absence of this policy.
‘Those in the middle’ are struggling too, Paul.
Talking-up Scotland 'Albatraz' 
Hey Hutcheon are you stupid ? we in Scotland pay much less than people in England but you don’t mention that glaring fact do you ? It must be that you are stupid or a supporter of right wing English politics , actually it could well be both.
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Whilst on the subject of council tax, this evening on BBC Radio 4 (at c. 1730hrs) we got a very partial account of the FM’s conference speech. The BBC correspondent sought to link the new commitment to freeze council tax across Scotland next year with concerns (unattributed) about a negative impact on Local Authority (LA) budgets.
Last time the SNP in government froze council tax (between 1999/2000 and 2015/2016), Labour repeatedly claimed in Holyrood that the council tax freeze had been “underfunded” to the detriment of LA budgets.
A rebuttal of this claim was carried in, of all places, The Scotsman in an article dated 22 September, 2015. It had this headline: ‘Scottish Government council tax freeze “over-funded” – the council tax freeze is not underfunded and claims that the Scottish Government does not offer a fair deal to local authorities are not borne out by statistics, Scottish Parliament researchers have found.’
We learn that the independent Scottish Parliament Information Centre (SPICe) had concluded that the money provided by the Scottish Government to freeze the council tax resulted in LAs receiving more income than they would have done by increasing rates by RPI (retail price index).
The same article had this: ‘Commenting on the Spice report, SNP MSP Kevin Stewart said the report has “COMPLETELY DEMOLISHED YEARS OF BOGUS CLAIMS FROM LABOUR “. (my emphasis)
Source https://www.scotsman.com/news/politics/scottish-government-council-tax-freeze-over-funded-1494848
One wonders if the BBC’s correspondent is aware of this recent history. And we wait to discover if the BBC correspondent’s remarks today signal Labour’s next SNPbad attack line.
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Labour will find it difficult to make SNPbad stories up while they are free falling in
support down south and councillors quitting over Starmers support of Israel.
The Guardian……………. https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2023/oct/16/labour-councillors-quit-party-in-protest-at-keir-starmers-israel-stance
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Also complete silence from Scottish branch office……..maybe haven’t had their
instructions on what to say or think from London yet……Scotland not important enough just now!!!
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Why refer to the retail price index when it isn’t an official statistic? SPICe must be staffed by people who don’t know what they are doing if they used the RPI instead of the consumer price index.
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Well Paul Hutcheon IS part of the client media that works for New New Labour in Scotland…..so HIS job is to find any angle, via his employer The Daily Record , who are a Labour supporting paper, that presents negativity via anything implemented by the SNP while ensuring minimal or NO coverage is given to any negative stories connected to the Labour party……hence why here in Scotland , and also in England and Wales, they, New New Labour, could win by deceit and too via being protected by their client media……..
Ironic that Hutcheon is trying to keep alive the false notion that the SNP are Tories in all but party name when HIS preferred party, New New Labour, plan to retain many TORY generated policies, to include Brexit, indeed in some instances go even FURTHER than the Tories……in fact Rachel Reeves once said “”We are not the party of people on benefits. We don’t want to be seen, and we’re not, the party to represent those who are out of work,”…….indeed they are not ….they are instead very much THE party ,who like the Tories, want to appeal MORE to those with MONEY who they then expect to support and donate to them as a party…….while in return what do they, New New Labour, promise to do for them, the wealthy donors, in return for their donations….well obviously far MORE than they are planning to do and offer those who Paul Hutcheon refers to as those who are “the poor” in Scotland and elsewhere in the UK…that’s for sure.
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An opinion piece about a Conservative Party council tax freeze, in England, four years ago? I’m calling bullshit on this. Check that: I’m calling desperate bullshit on this.
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