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Sunday, 20 January, 2008 
I always have a little chuckle to myself, shortly before weeping, when I see the statistics on inflation. Apparently it’s running at 2.1% at the moment which sounds pretty good. There’s a nagging feeling in the back of my mind that all is not quite as it seems. I have a feeling the ‘basket of goods’ on which inflation is calculated seems to be missing a few items which some might consider reasonably important I’m looking to buy a bigger house in the autumn into which my new wife and I will move once we get married. The only problem is that a 2 bed-with-box-room-semi in Roundhay can cost at least £270,000. House price inflation over the last ten years has been 180%. So on a 3x loan, your average buyer needs to be earning £90,000 a year to borrow enough money to get a 2½ bedroom house. Perhaps the Bank of England ‘forgot’ to pop houses in the inflation basket. It would, in all fairness, have to be a very large basket to fit in a house Anyway, don’t listen to me moaning, perhaps the way around this is to jump in the car and do a bit of shopping around for low prices on groceries. The only problem here is that petrol seems to have gone up 10% in the last year and an extra 2p per litre tax is on its way in April So what about the things we buy each week when we do get to the shops? Well, these seem to be going up a bit too. Has a loaf of bread gone up? I’m not talking about foccaia bread with sun-dried tomatoes and raisins. No, I’m talking about our finest supermarket tastes-like-rubber loaf. Research shows in the last year there has been a 12 percent price increase at the three major supermarkets for bread and similar basic food items. Presumably ‘food’ is missing from the basket also. After all, who’d put food in a shopping basket? I think I’m going to stick at home and ride all this out and wait until my cynicism abates. I won’t be in a hurry to pop on the fire though. I’m wondering if the 13% gas price increase in the last year is included in our basket. Presumably logic would dictate that you can’t carry gas in a basket. At least no basket I’ve ever seen And why is it that when pensions and most wages go up by 2% a year are Council Tax increases always more than this? Only around one quarter of the money the Council spends is raised from Council Tax. The rest comes from Business Rates (just over one quarter) and our taxes paid to the Government, returned to us in a Settlement Grant (just under a half). The Council spends over £800 million each year in Leeds and to give you an idea, an increase in Council tax of 4% increase would take in £8million extra The Council’s second largest outgoing is Social Care costs (over £235 million last year), which increases each year at many times inflation as our population ages. Running other services involves dealing with the sort of real inflation we all experience on fuel and goods, so trying to keep Council Tax increases down to 2.1% a year is a bit of an issue. This year we have an additional serious problem. The Government is chopping a massive £8million the settlement they provide this year in the worst settlement in living memory. This means the Council needs to plug a gap of £8million plus the normal inflation in costs across all our services So what will the Council Tax increase be this year? We’ll have to wait a little longer to find out but rest assured, we’ll make sure it won’t be 8%, but I’m sorry, much as I’d love it to be, it won’t be 2% either
Matthew Lobley Roundhay Ward Conservative Councillor
Wednesday, 02 January, 2008
30+ years ago we were told on Tomorrow’s World that robots and computers in our houses would render us useless and desperately in search of hobbies to fill the empty hours of our days From time to time technology does come along which is truly helpful. Anyone who’s used a Tom Tom to navigate will confirm that these devices are fantastic. Much safer than driving with a map book between your knees. Which I’ve never done And what about PDA’s - the hand held computers where they advertise that you can access your e-mails on the beach? I know what my fiancée would say if I pulled out my PDA on the beach. I think I’d be buying a snorkel to recover it. These things are OK but ultimately they tempt you into working every waking hour and in my case they succeed. That has to be a step backward Home broadband is a good idea though. I’m not one of those people who spends hours surfing the web but when you realise you can connect to the work computer network from home, avoid the time and cost of commuting and actually be in when Parcel Force push those cards through your door purporting to have missed you, you know it’s a winner Mobile phones are a phenomenal piece of technology and no matter how hard I try to resist it, I am very tempted by one of those Apple iPhones. But ultimately, do they really move the game forward or are they just doing what has been before, only a bit better? And mobile phones are another device which can ‘help’ you to work longer hours So where will technology take us next? Here’s my prediction for technology in 2018, ten years from now In the near future all products in the supermarket are to be fitted with tiny radio ID tags rather than bar codes. With a tag reader in the kitchen cupboards, we should be able to see at a glance from our living room TV screen not only a stock-check of everything in the cupboards, but also every conceivable recipe for what you could make with it. You could set your home network to automatically order anything that had run out for home-delivery. That would be useful for the less imaginative cooks amongst us. No more traipsing back to the supermarket when you’ve forgotten the After Eight’s What else will we see? In the States the new Honda FCX hydrogen fuel cell car is now available, running on hydrogen and emitting only water from its exhaust. All we need now is a way to get an affordable source of hydrogen I suspect new houses will be built with photo-electric solar roof tiles (available now) which will drop in price to become a worthwhile proposition for all of us. These could assist in heating the house, the water and…could potentially fuel a unit making hydrogen out of water for the car. This is of course if I remember a science experiment from my youth on ‘electrolysis’ correctly – something to do with electrodes, currents and a beaker of water if my mind serves me correctly. Can you imagine free fuel for your emission free car? But will any future technology development actually help us to work fewer hours and enjoy more leisure time? I doubt it very much. Ultimately we British are our own worst enemy. Short of the Government mandating a compulsory siesta every day, I suspect we’ll continue working longer hours to pay our mortgages, and continue to complain about the injustice of it all… but secretly not want to give it up Happy New Year Matthew Lobley Roundhay Ward Conservative Councillor
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