If ever there was a demonstration of the disconnection between Labour and safeguarding taxpayers’ money, it was this week’s suggestion from new Edinburgh Council transport convener Stephen Jenkinson that the astronomical cost of the city’s tram line didn’t matter.
Reacting to news that the line has lost £54.5 million since opening, Cllr Jenkinson insisted such benefits as it brought were “far beyond the cost or profit.”
Really? I doubt that’s what thousands of Edinburgh residents who never set foot on a tram think, and thousands more will wonder if construction costs of over £1 billion can ever be justified when Lothian Buses were providing excellent services along the route and still are.
If you are going to the airport by public transport, why take the tram when the bus is faster and takes you closer to the terminal entrance?
Operationally it might just have washed its face were it not for an annual “asset fee” of £8.5m the council charges to help fund the enormous construction borrowing cost.
But don’t forget every tram customer is one not getting a bus, and nothing convinces me it’s anything other than a vastly expensive vanity project devised and still defended by Labour councillors.
Despite the evidence, and the council still expecting a £143m budget shortfall by 2028-29, there is no hint of ditching plans for more tram lines to Granton and the Royal Infirmary. But why not if cost and profit don’t matter?
Labour’s love of levies includes what could be up to £1.3 million raked in from Low Emission Zone (LEZ) penalties issued between June and August, the Tourist Tax and now the revival of plans for a workplace parking tax.
Cllr Jenkinson said he hoped the LEZ would be so effective there will be no fines, but that would just be an excuse to extend the zone because they’ll need the money. Who remembers a Labour administration, locally or nationally, being happy about surrendering tax revenue?
We are supposed to be grateful they won’t increase income tax or national insurance, and Work and Pensions secretary Liz Kendall even had the audacity to tell the Labour Conference they were helping poor pensioners just by pointing out benefits to which they were already entitled, while stripping millions more of their winter heat allowance.
For Labour, economic growth is just a means to raise more tax, and if it’s not in used fivers under your mattress, they will find a way to grab your cash. The warnings were clear this week; ramped up taxes, new ones raised, and plundered pensions are on the way because they need to fund big pay deals to keep their public sector union paymasters happy.
Then they will spend even more they can’t afford, and the vicious circle goes on.
Not true? Then explain why anyone in their right mind facing a multi-million-pound black hole would consider spending billions – and it will be billions ─ on extending a tram already losing millions and hobbling a successful bus company in the process.
Like VAT on private schools, socialists don’t see the need for people to keep their own money for anything other than basic needs, unless it’s new clothes for government minsters. As education secretary Bridget Phillipson said, socialism is all about the power of government. Be very afraid.
