Local authority pensions - we're all being creamed dry to pay for people who retire at fifty, or more likely, are effectively sacked for incompetence, but given their full pension. In some cases they're still young enough to get another job, with another nearby council, depsite their incompetence or the fact that they are already being paid the pension they don't deserve.
This is why many proper pensioners are already struggling, and are going to be in serious financial trouble when the rebanding comes in. It's happenning right now in Wales, but people don't seem to think it matters, as it's "only the Welsh". This is a crafty way of introducing the scheme gradually, so as to make it less unpalatable to the rest of the country.
If you bought your house for 40,000 pounds ten years ago, and if the ridiculous market means it is now "worth" 275,000, despite the fact that you've spent nothing on it, why does it suddenly cost the council all this extra money to sporadically collect your rubbish, and run a few schemes such as residents parking for which we pay extra anyway?
Labour is going to do this to us, particularly since it is its own local authorities which are wasting all this money. The Tories have kept their gobs shut, which means that they will probably be happy to leave things as they are. The Lib Dems, on the other hand, have proposed a system which simply shifts part of the burden from a small minority of the worst affected, most newsworthy people, heaping it onto everyone else. None of them are going to do anything about the problem, or even address it.
The press are desperately trying to make out that this is a key election battleground, but it's the usual story: Labour are going to screw us, the Tories have nothing to say about this (do they agree or are they just so shit they can't think of anything) and the Lib Dems can say what they want, since they will never get in. In view of this, you'd think that the lack of pressure would mean that they would come up with some good ideas, but the funny thing is that their ideas are often the worst of the lot. Their tax plan means we're all worse off, except for one old lady, somewhere near Louth.
Like all the other issues so far, the parties are more or less in agreement and none of them have anything constructive to say about this issue. The depressing thing is that whatever happens, we're all going to be paying more council tax next year. It's what Blair wants, Howard has shut up, probably because it was his idea in the first place and Kennedy doesn't care and/or is pissed. Probably.