Budget 2010-11 consultation

This from Tav on the WFA which he's fisked in a fine manner. Yep as he says it's a 'look we're consulting with the public' exercise, but as you read the questions you realise they're not really asking any questions you can answer. I was going to take part, but oh look it closed today. Apparently it ran until today from the 15th January, and I'm going to hold my hands up and say mea culpa as it was noted in the Shuttle on the 25th with of course no links to it. Hey I can't see everything.

So looking at what Tav's published is there anything I can add. Well running in order let's start with questions 1&2
(1) Is it acceptable to increase the overall Council Tax by approximately 2.5%?
(2) Would you prefer the Council Tax increase to be higher, lower or around 2.5%?
Note that you have no say on whether you think there should be an increase only if it should be higher or lower than 2.5%. No explanation seems to be provided for why there has to be an increase at all, just ya know that's what happens.

Again Tav deals with the Savings and Spending section by pointing out they don't tell you how much they're already spending on such things or what any extra money would buy. So

(3) Do you agree that the Council should introduce new working practices and review staff benefits to save £210,000.
Rather than 'Let's cut the hours and make staff buy their own pencils' for instance or
(11) Do you agree that the Council should spend more money on cleaning the streets.
as in will throwing money at the problem create a solution? I don't know; if you're spending £10 a day then yeah if you're spending £100,000 a day then I don't think so.

It's the standard lack on context and information combined with the binary yes/no fiction humans like to try to impose on reality. Big surprise.