Cash-strapped London council starts crowdfunding drive to pay for green upgrades
By Paul Homewood
h/t Patsy Lacey
Deep cuts to government funding have led a council in south London to ask its residents to invest their own money, for a financial return, to build cycle hangars, new LED street lighting and green upgrades at schools and leisure centres.
In the midst of a financial crisis hitting town halls across England, councillors in Southwark have resorted to a crowdfunding scheme to raise £6m over the next six years to help fund climate-friendly projects.
In a creative response to the double challenge of financial constraints and maintaining investment required to tackle the climate emergency, the scheme plans to raise £1m for the coming financial year with the offer of a 4.6% return for investors.
An overwhelming majority of English local authorities are planning deep cuts to services and maximum possible council tax rises to remain financially solvent, despite an extra £600m cash injection from the government.
“Certainly that’s the context,” said Emily Hickson, the Labour-run council’s deputy cabinet member for green finance. “Southwark is not different to any other council in the country: we’re all struggling with the lack of central government grants and keeping up with inflation.
I’ve got a better idea – just cancel all of this green twaddle, and spend the money on all of the other services you are cutting.
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NOT A LOT OF PEOPLE KNOW THAT 
Hammersmith and Fulham Council are doing the same thing. They sent an email a few weeks ago telling us all that we could lend them money to waste on green initiatives. I sent the email on to Private Eye and they wrote about it in 2 consecutive issues. Their take was the same as mine, lend money to your council – what can possibly go wrong?
Good man. You need to go to a Council meeting and tell them how stupid they are.
Ya godda jis luvv the nonsense of green politics.
Howzit go now? Vote SNP get green, vote labour get green, vote conservative get woke, vote liberal get no very much, Get REFORM , vote …..well who ?
And yet Sadiq khan can spend million rebranding the London train network. You could not make this up
And magically find millions to give payrises to the overpaid tube drivers.
The interesting thing will be how many people are actually stupid enough to waste their money on saving the planet.
Lots, Philip, Lots and lots and lots. Ignorance is in overabundant supply.
If anything, it’s an intelligence test to see how many people who still haven’t figured out that it’s a scam …
Given the woke marxists takeover of education there will now be an inexhaustible supply of useful idiots coming out of our schools, robots incapable of writing a cogent sentence but with heads full of lefty nonsense sufficient to chant asinine slogans in praise of the cause.
I can understand the proven need to empty bins, educate children, mend the roads etc, but where is the proven need that justifies the expenditure on “green” upgrades as detailed ?
Certainly there is no science to support any of it, but given that science and maths are now classified as wathitht, that “annoyance” is taken care of.
Decadence dies when you run out of Other People’s Money.
The Ancients were wrong. “Democracy dies when the people realize they can vote a raid on the treasury.”
The Ancients didn’t understand CREDIT. The Treasury is empty. Democracy hasn’t died. Because there is still credit to go through before it dies.
U.S. debt is 32,000,000,000,000. And growing.
Have a nice day!
WHat’s t hat as a percentage? (or Decimal ) fractions no good
So taxpayers fund a 4.6% return? I pay for my own return? This isn’t investment, its spending. Why would I do that?
“Why would I do that?”
You and I wouldn’t, but as noted above, there are plenty of people stupid enough to do so…
Heard a great one this morning reference the “Climate Emergency” spending. ”Its like prescribing Chemotherapy for a cold!” (I think it was on V Derbyshire but couldn’t swear to it.)
I wonder how much taxpayers money they waste on DEI?
to be fair. LED street lights do make sense. As we know from home use, they use much less electricity and last years longer, so reducing power and maintenance costs, and should pay for themselves in a reasonable time. I used to live in a town which had put a lot of LED lights in and they were fine. However it is something that a council should be doing themselves. Unfortunately they spaff their cash on woke and mad ideas instead
LED street lights do make sense.
You sound just like the damn fascist government.
LED lights might make sense, if you have the money to invest and other considerations, like are you going to be there long enough for the “investment” to pay off. Each individual should be free to decide what is most important to him in making such a decision.
Government decides LED is best, so bans everything else. So a Walmart employee has to spend over an hour’s pay to buy a light bulb.
“Maintaining the investment required to tackle the climate emergency”.
Well first there is no “emergency”. But even if there was one, a council installing LED street lights and cycle hangars wouldn’t have the slightest effect on it. Heck, even if Britain shut down completely and we all perished it STILL wouldn’t have any effect on the World’s climate, given that we contribute less than 1% to the World’s CO2 emissions.
So this is an empty gesture and anyone giving money to Southwark Council for this is just showing how utterly stupid they are
Cycle hangars for who?