So Durham County Council Labour councillors voted through the Council budget today.

This includes keeping a £12860 clothing allowance for Chair and Vice Chair

It also includes subsidising trade unions upto £130,000. Interestingly the £1.15m collected for the unions from staff is collected for free by taxpayers but our primary schools have to pay for their staff wages to be managed. Nothing fair there then.

Labour also voted to cut Citizen’s Advice Bureau funding again and refused to reduce the special allowances senior councillors get.

They also refused to cut the 65p a mile car allowance for senior officers. The saving could have helped to boost Bus routes by £300,000 a year.

Labour refused to use some of the £4.5m they are adding to the council savings account to help boost the local economy and promote careers advice.

They also refused all other opposition amendments to the budget including an independent one which like our budget would have boosted highways funding.

The leader of the council actually refused to support bringing back one of his own Labour  government schemes which worked to boost business, in effect saying that if government wasn’t willing to fund it then tough, they weren’t willing to either. It felt like  an attack on the residents of our county.

So there you have it – more money into waste, more money into reserves and all ideas from the opposition ignored.

The sooner Labour lose control in County Durham the sooner this County and the Council can move forward and build a new economy. A hundred years of Labour control and we are one of the poorest counties in the whole country. Shame on Labour councillors.