How touching. Catholic and Protestant congregations in south Belfast signed petitions after church this Sunday threatening non-payment unless a cap is introduced on domestic rates. But alas their campaign is doomed.
Unlike next year's water bills, which are entirely voluntary, this is one bill you really do have to pay. Refusal can result in prosecution, imprisonment, confiscation of property and withholding of benefits. Even if our middle-class martyrs are prepared to suffer these consequences, no victory is possible. Water charging is a privatisation scam which the government will abandon if non-payment renders it unviable. But rates are just taxation and no government will abandon that, no matter how many people refuse to cooperate.
It is widely believed that Secretary of State Peter Hain's failure to cap domestic rates is a cynical move to force the DUP back to Stormont. This belief is lent credence by his claim that only a reconvened assembly can impose a cap that Westminster is happy to impose everywhere else. However, if that is Hain's ploy it is a doomed campaign as well.
For a start, the cross-community congregations of south Belfast are hardly key DUP supporters. Even the Protestants will generally vote UUP if they vote at all – it's not called 'big-house unionism' for nothing.
Besides, the electoral numbers don't add up. According to figures from the Department of Finance and Personnel, capping rates at the UK level would benefit only 0.5% of households, leaving the remainder to make up a considerable shortfall in revenue. It would be lunacy for any political party to advocate such a move, especially one which draws its support from low income voters.
There is simply no way that uncapped domestic rates will bounce the DUP into a deal. So what is to be done by the affluent afflicted? What they and Peter Hain have apparently forgotten is that rates are both a regional tax and a local tax. This year local council spending accounts for 44% of the average domestic rates bill (the figure for Belfast is 47%).
In the absence of an assembly, local councillors are the only elected representatives in Northern Ireland with the power to reduce those bills. This fact will become even more pertinent with the arrival of the seven new super-councils. Both Sinn Féin and the DUP clearly intend to run the super-council areas under their control as semi-autonomous cantons, which means funding all the expensive accoutrements of home rule for Ballygobackwards.
Meanwhile, the officials who actually run local government will be left to their own devices. They have already warned that, far from reducing overheads, amalgamating the existing councils will increase overheads. These are the same empire-building bureaucrats who currently spend more on tourism promotion than on economic development in Craigavon, more on administration than on parks and recreation in Dungannon and more on 'corporate services' than on environmental health in Belfast.
Once they are also in charge of planning, roads, transport and housing their cup shall surely runneth over with other people's money – and as always, they can expect the council chamber to rubber-stamp their ballooning budgets in-between the more important business of flags and memorials.
The cost of local government has never been an issue in Northern Ireland before. It is an issue that is inseparable from the Kafkaesque culture of local government itself, which under 30 years of direct-rule non-scrutiny has achieved almost unbelievable levels of laziness, incompetence, arrogance and nepotism.
What everyone who wants a lower rates bill now needs to ask their political representatives is how they intend to tackle that culture. Ironically, the DUP has the best record on controlling council spending. But that record is too superficial to offer much promise. DUP councillors target public amenities like leisure centres while leaving bloated back-office structures intact.
Challenging the culture of local government requires patience, persistence and attention to detail. It means that street-fighters and rabble-rousers must give way in the chamber to managers and accountants. There is plenty of such talent among our political class but it will only rise to the top if the electorate rewards it. Otherwise it is rates that will rise, inexorably.
The National Lottery has been described as a tax on stupidity. Should voters continue to favour councillors who stick it to each other over councillors who stick to a budget, domestic rates in Northern Ireland will amount to much the same.
