And welcome to the Pompey Politics Podcast. If you're listening live, you're joining us on February

the 16th. We're the podcast that discusses local, national and international matters in a calm,

reasoned and balanced way with almost no biting, gouging or swearing. I'm Ian Tiny Morris.

And I'm Simon Sandsbridge. I feel like I'm obliged to provide the biting, gouging or swearing.

So February the 14th, a romantic day, Valentine's Day, happened this week.

I hope everybody had a fantastic Valentine's Day and enjoyed themselves.

February 11th, however, while not being Valentine's Day, was an expression of sincerely heartfelt emotions other than love.

Probably a bit strong to call them hate, but we'll just, we'll let you the viewer decide. It was the cabinet meeting

for Portsmouth City Council, the precursor to the full council budget meeting that takes

place on the 25th. So we're going to talk about the cabinet meeting because it gives us some

spoilers. Yeah, no, today it's a chance for us to pick up on

the insights in terms of, you know, setting a balanced budget, you know, what will be the proposal

for the rise in council tax? I think a betting person might already have their shilling on

4.99%, but we'll come to that in due course.

And I guess it's, there's an added dimension this time round, Simon, is we're not, we're

still not sure whether this is the last ever Portsmouth CC unitary budget or whether they'll

get another go next year before local government reorganisation and devolution

swallows them up and spits them out as a different animal yeah indeed and that's that's kind of the

key thing and something actually that council leader steve spit steve pit um speaks of rather passionately

um towards the towards the towards the end of the meeting.

So just so that anybody knows, and if they wanted to actually look at more of the details

of the meeting, it is available on the council's website.

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