Just when you thought panto season was locked away in the attic with the tinsel and the tree for another year, Fife Council’s very own brand of over-the-top theatre was back with a bang last week.
And this year, it was broadcast for everyone to enjoy.
Yes, it was budget day at Fife House, and it’s probably fair to say audiences were not on the edge of their seats as most of the region’s elected councillors filed into the local authority’s headquarters to set one of the less controversial budgets in recent memory.
For the first time this year, the council budget meeting was streamed online in the hope it would give people at home a greater understanding of Fife’s political machinations.
In spite of the fact there were essentially no changes put forward by opposition parties to the actual spending plans tabled by the joint SNP/Lab administration, there was still room for the usual political point scoring.
In case you missed it, both the SNP and Labour blamed the Westminster government for the current financial state of affairs; members of the SNP and Labour groups got in small digs at one other but kept up the appearance of a harmonious administration; and the Liberal Democrat group produced no alternative budget but had a lot to say on the version on the table.
The Conservatives also had no plan of their own, despite an ‘amendment’ which called on the council to realise more savings by outsourcing services.
And after the usual game of political ping-pong across the council chamber everyone agreed it had been a fait accompli all along and the administration’s budget plans for 2019/20 were rubber-stamped.
Despite the soundbites and posturing, the real devil will be in the detail of what it means for Fifers and you have to wonder how engaged ordinary people are with the whole process – beyond seeing their council tax go up by 3% and their rents by 3.2%
Live streaming might well be a step in the right direction for open democracy but I can’t imagine too many people – barring former councillors, reporters and local government purists – would have been keen to sit through the four-plus hours of debate.
However, as co-leader David Alexander pointed out in his closing remarks, it’s not so much the budget itself that matters but the outputs it delivers.
That’s what really counts, and only time will tell.
