• BigTwerp@feddit.uk
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    6 days ago

    Absolutely, for the low, low price of two new hospitals and a new primary school some more people get to join the grift train for a few months before the council they are elected to ceases to exist. Worth it.

    • Zombie@feddit.uk
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      6 days ago

      £63m is less than £1 per UK citizen.

      Good luck building 2 hospitals and a school for that price considering the new maternity and cancer ward in Aberdeen (which has a huge hospital site already so land isn’t an issue) is to cost over £400m.

      https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/c5y6r5zy4zro

      But I guess facts are an inconvenience when you’re trying to build resentment and anger in people.

      • BigTwerp@feddit.uk
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        5 days ago

        If you cherry pick a badly run upgrade to a run-down hospital in the middle of a city as an example then of course the numbers will be high. If (like me) you choose a badly needed community hospital in a more remote and deprived area then £30m is easily enough.

        I don’t want a penny of my taxes going on these particular elections since it is a massive waste and your flawed logic isn’t going to convince me otherwise.

    • mannycalavera@feddit.uk
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      6 days ago

      Hmm that’s kinda the price of democracy though. It’s a lot of money for sure I’m not denying that. But we can’t have a system of democracy whereby we ignore the rules (I know I know how stupid that sounds given the UK, but we can try and be better 😂).

      As a counterpoint, we held EU parliament elections in the UK in 2019 when we were leaving the EU. We could make the same argument there. But we did it to follow the rules that underpin good democratic governance (I know I know Brexit bad, grr shakes fist).

            • mannycalavera@feddit.uk
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              4 days ago

              Yes. And it is the law to conduct the elections. It wasn’t the law to “conduct regular elections unless you can’t be bothered in which case YOLO”. That’s why the courts ruled against the government.

              Are you suggesting that if the government doesn’t find the law convenient it should just ignore it?

              • 20dogs@feddit.uk
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                4 days ago

                No I’m saying that the British government could pass primary legislation if it really wanted to and cancel the elections. Parliament is sovereign, but they just cancelled these elections in a really cack-handed way that forced them to backtrack (although they could in theory still take this route).

                They didn’t really have that choice for the EU elections.

                • mannycalavera@feddit.uk
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                  4 days ago

                  Agreed. But they didn’t. It’s absolutely the cack handed way they’ve gone about this which is troubling. Yup 👍🏼.