07/05/2010: "will we notice "the cuts?""

ive heard all kinds of people and official bodies and unions, moaning about the proposed cuts in the public sector and civil service jobs, but will we the public actually be any worse off?

cuts have to come, of this there can be no doubt, we cannot go on borrowing vast billions of pounds every year just to keep the country ticking along.
there will of course be some argument about "the speed" of these cuts, but which ever party had won the last general election, cuts were coming.
the choices were stark for us, the normals, either face cuts early and be told about them, or vote back in the existing policy makers who had already started cutting (over Ł800 million in higher education budgets, juts 2 weeks before the general election) but didnt want to tell us about further cuts they were making - giving the perception to most people that they would cut later.

common complaints so far have been;
- same old tories
- theres going to be a double dip recession
- unions are threatening strike action
- the government are robbing the poor to support the rich

how much did you gain from all the borrowing?
did you get more from the NHS?
- if you require accident and emergency, did the times you had to wait fall?
the answer for my family is a resounding NO.
noone denies that our nurses and doctors do a top class job, but waiting times on the two occasions to be seen for A&E in the past three years, remained at 4 hours to be treated on each occasion.
did my roads get cleaned more often?
- NO, rubbish was still left to sporadic cleaning, normally just before some form of election
did our road surfaces get sorted out?
- NO, if anything roads in my area got considerably worse!
in 2007-08 more than Ł47 BILLION was taken in taxes from the motorist, we were told they were to be used on public transport projects... our former government were telling us lies!!!
fewer than Ł9 Billion was spent on public transport projects, and when i pressed greg pope, my local MP for labour on it, he first accused me of wanting to close schools and hospitals down, then he refused to answer at all, saying he was "far too busy to discuss the matter further"

then we have the destruction of manufacturing - the things that we make and sell to other countries around the world, more than 1.3 MILLION manufacturing jobs have been lost, replaced with 1.8 MILLION civil service jobs... no wonder the unions have been virtually silent during the labour government's time in power.
whilst some civil service jobs have been welcome, more nurses etc, the number of nhs dentists has dropped dramatically (12 months waiting list just to register in many areas and for more than 2 million people) more police officers - not many if you exclude community support officers who have no official powers and are not fully qualified police officers, but look at the amount of form filling brought in which of course needs civil servants to do, vast amounts of wasted paper and staff.
do the police still land at your door when you dial 999? of course they do.... will they still do so when the cuts are brought in? of course they will
ironic this example, as all this extra money being spent (we are told) yet our police force has actually been fragmented and our area at weekends is now covered by a call centre in city centre more than 35 miles away... the extra spending hasnt given us any improvement here either.

in truth, borrowing billions every year was swallowed up by the banks that were lent vast amounts of money to get them out of a financial black hole, of their own making - the public received not one penny piece of it.
to make matters worse, is that unscrupilous labour mps continuously mislead the public by telling us that the huge borrowing and printing of new money (called quantitive easing) was to prevent a recession and protect the people and their public services.
it was not... a great chunk of what was printed and borrowed was to pay for PFI (money to pay for schools and hospital buildings and the interest we owed upon that borrowing) which was hidden from the country's financial books.

the main concern i have with cuts are that the government would like cuts to be made, in a way that will protect front line services, yet any cuts in services people use regualry will be blamed on the current government, even when its the choice of those at a more local level.

the blame game will fall at the government's door, despite the decisions being made at local level.
something has to give, we cannot go on borrowing as we have done and hiding billions of interest and payments that we owe, from the public accounts must no longer be tolerated!