LABOUR COUNCILS - DO SOMETHING!!
The policies of austerity - shamefully not opposed by the dominating right-wing of the Labour Party - are having a devastating effect on local communities.
These are some key facts so far since 2010 - according to the Financial Times today.
Around 150,000 pensioners have lost access to vital services. (Note these are vital services!)
There has been an 8% cut in child protection spending. That’s child protection!
Per child spending on children’s centres (0 - 4 yr olds) has dropped from £446 in 2010, to £319 in 2013 - a 28% cut.
Factory health and safety inspections in 2009 (in England) numbered around 56,000. By 2009 this had been slashed to around 5,000. A 90% reduction. Fifty three councils have abandoned pro-active inspections altogether!
Here’s a straight quote from the FT - “Children’s social work departments, faced with a surge in referrals after public awareness was raised through a series of abuse scandals, have seen their funds cut by the equivalent of more than £600 for every referred child”.
Overall, there’s been a cut of £18 billion to council budgets - nearly 20% of spending.
And there’s another £9.5 billion of cuts to go before 2020!
WHAT ARE LABOUR COUNCILS DOING ABOUT THIS?!
Instead of breaking the law by organising a fight back, they are instead breaking the law by putting more and more families with children into B&B accommodation for longer than 6 weeks at a time!
From Tory and Liberal councils we might expect nothing but seat warming inactivity and perhaps some occasional hand wringing, but from so-called Labour councils we should expect more.
Unfortunately - with some very honourable exceptions (being TUSC or left-wing Labour, for example) - most Labour councillors seem not to have a recognisable backbone between the lot of them!
Why doesn’t Jeremy Corbyn respond to this by calling on all Labour councils to rise up against the cuts to services? Without this; what is Labour for?
No comments:
Post a Comment