[davidjay]

The council can't afford the Unite proposals so it has to do something. Hiring agency staff isn't a good look but we're going along the lines of "A Labour council... A LABOUR council..." from the union here.

[Tubby Isaacs]

Unite join the BMA and seemingly every other interest group in the old "Why don't the Government just pay what we want now?" group.

Somebody should put all these groups together and they can add it all up, and work out how much extra tax they want to pay.

[davidjay]

Unite join the BMA and seemingly every other interest group in the old "Why don't the Government just pay what we want now?" group.

Somebody should put all these groups together and they can add it all up, and work out how much extra tax they want to pay.

Everyone wants more, whether it's wages or services. The only thing they don't want more of is taxation.

[Tubby Isaacs]

Well, we'll get a test soon enough. I would think that petrol duty is going to rise, as one of the few things that's substantial and hasn't been ruled out by the Government. I'm expecting the same cross party outrage that we got when Employers' NI went up by 1.2 percentage points.