“Councils begging for your savings isn’t a net zero innovation – it’s an embarrassment”, writes James Baxter-Derrington in the Telegraph.
In an attempt to plug the ever-increasing funding gap, bankrupt-adjacent local councils have dusted off the begging bowl and covered it in tinsel.
Under the guise of investment, Green-led Bristol has become the latest council to offer what smells like a voluntary council tax to fund responsibilities that should be met from their existing budgets.
[…]
But in a demonstration of phenomenal gall these local bodies have launched their own Kickstarter for Councils, asking not only their residents, but anyone across the country, to foot the net zero bill – in exchange for below-market returns.
These green bonds can be found on Abundance Investment, a platform that facilitates these loans for a slice of the pie – 0.75pc of the total sum raised alongside an annual 0.2pc fee. The website proudly declares that it offers investments with councils “in a solid financial position”, despite Bristol councillors declaring just two months ago that the body faced bankruptcy if it can’t close its £52m funding gap.
Samizdata is not often seen as the go-to place for investment advice, but, on balance and after careful consideration, I would suggest that readers seeking a home for their money avoid “Bristol Climate Action Investment 1” like the plague and avoid “Hackney Green Investment 2” like Hackney. (“Does ‘Murder Mile’ still deserve its name?” asked the Hackney Post after a lull. Short answer: Yes.)
Nonetheless, I salute these councils for seeking to raise additional money by asking for it instead of demanding it with menaces. I would salute them even more if they moved entirely to a voluntary system. Though the prospect is unlikely, I hope the investors make their money back with interest, so that this trend towards councils raising money by ethical means might spread.
This reminds me of Edmund Burke mocking the practice of the French Revolutionaries of pulling off the silver buckles off their shoes (so much for these Revolutionaries being poor) and donating them to the new Revolutionary government.
One can not finance government this way – it is a farce. If the “Green” policy has been reduced to begging for donations, on top of the very high taxes that people already pay in Bristol, then the whole thing is falling apart.
By the way there is often little connection between the amount of money spent and the quality of services.
For example, a house in some counties of Alabama will attract an annual property tax of about 200 Dollars a year – a similar house in New Jersey would get hit by a property tax of about 2000 Dollars a year (TEN TIMES higher – 1000% higher), yet if anyone thinks local government services in New Jersey are ten times better than they are in Alabama – then you are mistaken.
“There are other taxes at State level in Alabama” – we are talking about local (not State level) government – but there are also other taxes at State level in New Jersey, and they are higher, overall, than the State taxes in Alabama.
In local government (full disclosure, I have been involved in local government finance, auditing, and planning – for quite some years), one learns that many of the things one was taught by free market “think tanks” such as the Institute of Economic Affairs and the Adam Smith Institute, are mistaken – are wrong.
For example, contracting out such things as road maintenance is not more efficient – it may once have been, but it is not in modern times. Also planning law does NOT prevent housing estates being built – on the contrary it is often more of a ritualistic exercise (to make the public think they have a say) than anything else.
Also the true waste of money is in places where the free market institutes do not look – most often in the above mentioned contracting out, or private providers.
The worst recent example that comes to mind (one I have been complaining about for years – and is now no longer commercially confidential, so I can speak about it publicly) is the contracting out of children’s care to private providers.
The care of a single child may cost (per year) the best part of a million Pounds – yes I did say MILLION Pounds.
How so? Well the private provider has to buy a property to put the child in and the property will be on a short (few year) mortgage – with the best part of a million Pounds due in payments per year (remember sometimes a property will contain one child – or a very small number of children – with very expensive staffing costs for children with severe problems).
“But after the mortgages are paid off the local taxpayers gain valuable assets” – no you have not being paying attention, the private providers gain ownership of the assets, even though the local taxpayers, indirectly, paid for them.
This abuse took years to stop – partly because central government has set up trusts to handle children’s social care, in some local government areas.
So the taxpayers hand over money to the council, the council hands over money to the trust (which may have many layers of management – and may overspend its budget, and the council is forced, by central government, to finance any overspend) and the trust hands over money to private providers – see how many links in a chain there are in such a process.
No one is doing anything illegal, no one is a criminal – but it is still a horrible use of the money of taxpayers, effectively paying for assets (buildings) they do not get to keep – do not get to own.
PFIs (Private Finance Initiatives) were another horrible abuse of a few years ago – perhaps the worst possible way to raise money. Government (i.e. the taxpayers) end up paying vastly more money than they spent (spent on whatever the project was).
Decide what you are going to spend – and stick to that budget, tax (not borrow or play fancy tricks) to get the money that you are going to spend – and directly employ (and control) the people who are doing the work.
And do not get me started on “bidding for funding” and the other “let us pretend government is a business” stuff that has been fashionable for some decades – often, in practice, this means that staff spend more time on the funding process than they do on the actual work.
Have a fixed budget.
“Market Socialism” or “let us pretend government is a business”, or “let us run government like a business”, with “bidding for funding”, “internal markets” and all the rest of it, is not new – Ludwig Von Mises mocked it more than a century ago.
It is depressing to see these crack brained ideas come back every few years – especially when it is pretended they are “free market” ideas.
We sometimes talk of the “Sword of State” – and government is a sword (it is the use of force), but the word “sword” can over romanticise the process – perhaps it is better to think of government as a CLUB – not an association, a clubbing weapon, a blunt instrument for bashing people on the head with.
$2000? In New Jersey? Maybe if it was a derelict building in Camden. I went to Zillow and looked up the current taxes on the now 60 year old 1,900 sq ft Levittown-style house I bought as a starter home back in the 80s – $6600/year in one of the worst school districts in New Jersey – the high school is rated 1 out of 10 by GreatSchools. A 1 is a seriously awful school – in the educational desert that is the Philadelphia School district only 2 of the 40 odd high schools are bad enough to only rate a 1.
Put the house on the market when my wife got pregnant, left the state and never looked back. Very educational experience, in its own way.
Please note that nothing in the OP is ‘investment advice‘ as far as I can see, as that is a regulated activity in the UK.
At least they are openly offering sub-prime returns, around 17 years ago some local councils were investing huge sums in Icelandic banks which then went bust. Of course, no one was held accountable, but they ought to have lost everything they owned or had right to, and been given one set of paper clothes and thrown out on the street.
“Decide what you are going to spend – and stick to that budget, tax (not borrow or play fancy tricks) to get the money that you are going to spend – and directly employ (and control) the people who are doing the work.”
I recall that council Direct Labour organisations were closed down, a few decades ago, in favour of sub-contracting. The reason was the endemic corruption within Direct Labour departments. Plus ca change.
phwest – I apologize for underestimating just how messed up local government (and State government) is New Jersey – the figures I was going on have similar houses in parts of Alabama paying one tenth of the Property Tax that a person would pay in Property Tax for a similar house in New Jersey – that they were paying ten times more in New Jersey (and, yes, getting very poor quality services in return) – but you may well be correct, it may be even worse. The State level of New Jersey is also very bad – very high taxes and one of the worse levels of debt in the United States.
As you know Philadelphia is over the State line in Pennsylvania, but yes Philadelphia is another Hell Hole – once a conservative city (yes it really was – before World War II) now rather the reverse. Although the debt position of New York City and Chicago is far worse – under British law both NYC and Chicago would already have had an official notice from the relevant financial officer and the elected local government would have been replaced by commissioners. NYC has gone bankrupt in the past – and will do again. Chicago is in an even worse debt position -much of its debt is hidden away as “county debt” (Cook County) or “School Board” debt (NYC’s accounts are a little more honest) – the legal position of Chicago is complicated because, I am told, that there is no bankruptcy provision in the laws of Illinois for a city to go bankrupt.
The 1870 Constitution of Illinois was got round in various ways by corrupt politicians and corrupt JUDGES (oh yes judges can be really bad) – but it offered some limits on government, the 1970 Constitution of Illinois is much worse. Although that is partly the fault of the “interpretation” of judges – for example the provision that the budget be balanced has been “interpreted” by corrupt judges to mean “balanced” by BORROWING.
By the way – “bond issues” are BORROWING MONEY, some non nerds (“Paul normal people do not spend their lives on audit committees” fair enough) seem to not understand that.
When any level of government “issues bonds” it is BORROWING MONEY.
Ten times higher is *900%* higher. 100+100%=200. 100*1=100.
Mr Ed – we almost got into trouble for NOT putting money in Icelandic banks.
United Kingdom Treasury “advice” was to put money in banks that offered the highest interest rates – there was no real provision in the “advice” concerning RISK.
As for Green ruled Bristol, like Green ruled Brighton it is well known in local government circles for being incredibly governed, even by modern standards.
So why do people vote Green?
Partly it is “virtue signalling” – to show they “care” about the environment (legends that C02, in reality plant food, is a deadly poison – and so on) – but there is also another factor.
Greens go around telling the voters that they, the Greens, will prevent developments – and most people (including the Institute of Economic Affairs and other free market think tanks) seem to believe that local government has the power to prevent housing and other developments – so some wealthy people vote Green so that, they believe, their view of fields and woods will not be replaced by a view of housing estates and warehouses.
Most people have not served on local government Planning Committees and have no idea that the Greens are LYING when they say that voting for them will prevent developments.
Unless you can present legally sound “Material Planning Considerations” a local government planning committee can prevent nothing – and your case has to be upheld, if there is an appeal, by the central Planning Inspectorate (and they tend to love developments).
Over stretched roads falling apart and endlessly jammed? The Highways Authority (loyal to the development agenda) will, normally, say there is no real problem.
Flooding? The Environment Agency (set up a few years ago – and also loyal to the development agenda) will, normally, say there is no problem.
If a development is turned down and this decision is upheld by the national inspectors – then the development must have been utterly insane, and even the Institute of Economic Affairs (with their vast experience – yes I am being sarcastic, as they have no experience at all) would have turned it down.
And such a development would never have been proposed in the first place if the people proposing it had to finance it with their-own-personal-money – rather than being some corporate entity.
Mistaking corporate entities (financed by Credit Money and with their shares controlled by other corporate entities) for an Adam Smith style free market, is a very servere error.
Yet all the examples you cite sound exactly like public sector incompetence, not failings of the free market.
Re: Hackney’s “murder mile”. 11 shot and killed over nearly 30 years. How positively British and quaint! That’s a weekend’s worth of gun murders in Chicago.
If they can’t get their hands on your cash directly, there’s always the old favourite: inflation.
Out of interest, does anyone know why councils like this are raising finance via third-party arrangers like “Abundance Investment Ltd” rather than bonds on the stock market? Is there a reason why doing it via finance arrangers is preferable?
Paul Marks
March 18, 2025 at 9:08 am
Paul, people might take your comments more seriously if you could get the basics right. It’s CO₂, not “C02”. It’s Carbon with two Oxygen, not Carbon-zero-two. I’ve seen this mistake in your comments before.
jdh – sadly it is already been pointed out that the gap was larger (not smaller) than I thought it was. If only it was “only” 900% more money that local governments in New Jersey were demanding.
Alex – you are seriously attacking me for typing C02?
If you are joking fair enough – if not, then bugger off Sir.
lmao
Six thousand six hundred Dollars Property Tax for an ordinary home in New Jersey – if true, astonishing – and horrific. Very grim for you phwest and for your family.
decnine – quite so Sir, there is no such thing as no waste (and perhaps no such thing as no corruption) in government, one can only try and reduce it as much as possible.
And giving up control is not a good way to do that.
Shlomo – I do no think there was anything “humble” about the attack, if (if) it was not a joke, it was the comment of an arrogant, pedantic, ass.
No, I am not attacking you. It wasn’t an attack, it was a mild correction. If you can’t tell the difference that’s your problem, not mine. Your comments dominate this blog, and as other people have recently pointed out they are not always on topic or relevant. They are often tangential. Many people don’t even read your comments, which is a shame as you often have some interesting thoughts but too often your comments are riddled with elementary errors like the one I pointed out which I’m sure you will understand may prejudice people against taking your comments seriously.
On this thread there are 14 comments, 6 of which are yours. If you’re going to post so prolifically you should consider spending some time editing your comments for clarity and ensuring there are no basic mistakes, for the sake of the other readers and for the sake of the author of the original post who will have usually spent considerable time ensuring their post is accurate and free of basic mistakes.
Edit to add: Paul’s comment count now 8 of 17 comments – just under half of all the comments posted thus far, because two more were posted while I wrote this comment.
You say that you cannot finance government by arranging finance through independent financial companies? Why so? Many of the UK’s councils used to routinely issue bonds on the stock exchange. Do you feel that the only legitimate way for a local authority to raise money is to raise taxes?
Even if it was a joke it was a very poor one…
Paul,
I, alas, over the last couple of years or so have had “dealings” with local government. I would rather chew my own feet off than go into them in detail but, suffice to say, I see exactly where you are coming from. We recently went from Tory (since Disraeli was in short pants) to Labour and you know what? They aren’t even worse!!!
I have a good friend who was a parish councillor here. He didn’t seek re-election. Instead he used some of his experiences as material for his stand-up comedy routine. He had to tone some of it down because it would be unbelievable even in a comedy context. And comedy has to have an element that people can relate to. And that is just the parish council!
I dunno what the fuck these people think they are achieving but I would vote for Satan if he fixed the roads and emptied the bins rather than sending me detailed 8 page letters threatening to jail me (yes!) if I bought plastic guttering.
So, my hat is off to you for your long service in local government without going completely doolally.
Alex:
I do not know how to do special characters in replies, so I also write CO2. “Computer literacy” is different than “literacy”, I think. Some of us oldsters do well simply figuring out Captcha hell!
😉
Not a question of formatting or computer literacy, it’s a question of actual literacy: you know the difference between a zero and a letter O.
It would be interesting to see who buys such bonds.
In the USA, we’d likely see them being picked up by NGO’s working off of government grants in an incestuous circle. It’s a great way to hide exactly where funding originates.
So the issue is, he typed C02 instead of CO2?
Yes, as I said in my original comment to Paul, he typed C-zero-two rather than Carbon-Oxygen-2. You may not think that’s significant, but it’s not a mistake anyone versed in the sciences would make.
It appears my original comment has been misunderstood. To be perfectly clear, I am mostly self-educated. I certainly make mistakes, often no doubt, but to continually make the same mistake indicates a misunderstanding of what the abbreviation means. It’s like people who type “ect.” when they mean “etc.”, it shows poor understanding of what the abbreviation refers to. Which ultimately undermines the comments in question. Given that a large number of Paul’s comments, and other people’s comments, criticize spending on ecological and environmental issues and have a strong emphasis on climate change scepticism, a scepticism that I share, it is rather unfortunate that the comments criticizing expenditure on CO₂ reduction misspell CO₂. It’s much easier to dismiss people’s views when they are poorly expressed than otherwise, in my opinion.
For the avoidance of doubt, I really, sincerely, do not intend this as an attack on Paul although I share the view that has been expressed several times here lately even by some of the main blog contributors that Paul is frequently off-topic and doesn’t actually respond to what people say but what he thinks they are saying, or just ignores replies and posts another comment on a tangent.
Blogs like Samizdata reach a wide audience. If we want the ideas expressed on this blog to be taken seriously by that large, wide audience I do think the commenters should put in a modicum of effort to (a) stay on topic – sorry!, and (b) take some care about spelling and comment quality. As my own comments on this issue now are the second most numerous comments on this post, I will drop the subject.
I wish more people had responded to my actual question than my aside to Paul.
Alex and Paul Marks,
I am not trying to adjudicate between you, but you both might like to consider that it is practically a law of nature that, for both parties in any internet debate, every subsequent post after the first two reduces their chance of convincing the other and reduces support from onlookers.
Well, for what its worth, I very much enjoy and appreciate pretty much all of Paul’s comments, including both his on-topic comments and his off-topic comments. I don’t always agree with Paul’s opinions – he and I have had a few sharp disagreements in the past – but I learn a lot from his comments and think they are well written.
I also think that Paul gives Samizdata comment threads distinct flavor and flair, that really no other commenter provides.
Fair point.
In my never-worked-in-bonding estimation, I’d guess that the bonding process is highly regulated, expensive, and involves actual legal promises and sometimes actual security, while the go-fund-me types of financing arrangements are cheap, and involve few actual enforceable promises. “Send us your money and we’ll DO stuff with it if we want!” versus “pay lawyers to draft enforceable contracts, make specific promises regarding the use of that money, and take on real loan obligations.”
> I am not trying to adjudicate between you, but you both might like to consider that it is practically a law of nature that, for both parties in any internet debate, every subsequent post after the first two reduces their chance of convincing the other and reduces support from onlookers.
That’s interesting. I often avoid getting into Internet debates because the time commitment required to “win”, or at least “draw”, can spiral out of control if the other person is up for an argument. Maybe responding once (with a serious response, not a troll) and then doing nothing else is actually a good policy.
Oh, FFS… Isn’t the key point that everyone knows what Paul Marks meant?
So… We’ve gone from Shlomo’s “Hate-Fest” to kicking a Paul over a typo!
@SojournerE
That’s interesting. I often avoid getting into Internet debates because the time commitment required to “win”, or at least “draw”
I have been commenting on the internet discussion forums for probably thirty or forty years. And in all that time I can count on one hand the number of times a comment thread has ended with “You have totally convinced me Fraser”. I think the same is true for me — that is to say a comment thread has changed my mind, though it has definitely happened a few times. Books change my mind. Random dudes on the Internet rarely do. Though I will say that a disproportionate number of mind-changers have been read on this blog.
So my life rule on these things — something I think should be taught in schools — is that you never win an argument on the internet. The best you can hope for is that your interlocutor stops replying. And I’m busy. The other guy almost always has more time to keep going than me, especially since my attention span is so short. So I’m here because I enjoy hearing other people’s point of view, trying out a few arguments here and there (and watching them embarrassingly explode in my face since I didn’t think them through carefully). When a discussion is circling the drain I’m happy to tap out. After all, once the last post is done nobody is every going to read it again in the history of the world. (Except Grok and OpenAI, who are sucking up all your posts and calculating social credit scores on you all… @Alex — your weighting as a grammar pedant — or worse orthography pedant — is going up as we speak. Better watch out!)
Minds rarely change but when they do change it is usually from a long series of exposures over long periods of time. A single internet dude hardly ever changes anyone’s mind. Minds are changed usually by a combination of diverse sources.
For example: conversations with friends, podcasts, books, conversations with family, youtube videos, internet research, and sometimes also comments from random internet dudes. It is a process. It takes time.
I think we all get caught up in the great internet discussion myth.
We know we rarely “win” an argument by convincing our debater, but we just cannot bear to leave their obviously wrongheaded last reply hanging out there unanswered for the less-knowledgeable (than us) reader to read uncorrected.
I think that impulse has driven 2/3 of all of the internet typing ever done.
@bobby b
we just cannot bear to leave their obviously wrongheaded last reply hanging out there unanswered
Yup, been there done that. But the funny thing is that usually by the time you get there everyone else has stopped reading the bickering and has moved on. And, of course, nobody is ever going to read it after you are done. So the answer is only hanging for two people, both of whom will have forgotten ten minutes from now.
It is kind of like two people arguing over the authenticity of a sand castle a week after the ocean has made the point moot.
It is always worth reminding ourselves that we aren’t solving the world’s problems. No world leader is searching Samizdata for advice on how to conduct public policy. It is just a bit of entertainment, fun and flexing our intellectual muscles a little.
Reminds me of this cartoon.
It is not necessary for a world leader to directly read Samizdata for Samizdata to potentially have some kind of significant impact on policy. I think there are some important people who read this blog sometimes.
It is not necessary for a world leader to directly read Samizdata for Samizdata to potentially have some kind of significant impact on policy. I think there are some important people who read this blog sometimes.
The fact that you think that explains so much. Let me assure you, you could not be more wrong.
Let’s just say that I know certain things for a fact.
@ Fraser Orr
Let me assure you, you could not be more wrong.
I wouldn’t be so sure. Years ago, when John Humphrys was still presenting BBC Radio 4’s Today programme, he mentioned Samizdata, calling it ‘the blog everybody reads’.
If you’re not familiar with the Today programme, it’s roughly equivalent to NPR’s Morning Edition. It’s widely followed in Westminster.