Friday 18 February 2011

The unkindest cuts

These are the (as expected) deliberately politically-motivated cuts to front-line services by local Labour councils here in south London. Two stories in the South London Press today caught my attention, as they concern the two councils upon whose adjoining boundary my home almost sits.

First, let's look across the road (or so) from me, at Lewisham. Here, the Labour-run Borough Council has just approved cuts of some £33 million, which have been deliberately targeted at (as the headline says) libraries, nurseries, elderly care and a youth club. Why? When other councils faced with similar public spending reductions can achieve results that do not impact the front line, why is Lewisham apparently unable to do the same?

Of course, the clue is in the word Labour. Everything for them is party politically motivated and has nothing to do with serving the public interest. Labour never do, though they sometimes make it look as if they are, at least to the less perceptive.

As a counterpoint to this story, let's move back across the boundary into Lambeth, where I live. Here we find a scandal that Lambeth Borough Council has run up a £35 million bill through leaving council housing empty while thousands of people remained on its housing waiting list. Note that this single-issue amount is greater than the savings the (at least as wasteful, inefficient and incompetent) Lewisham authority has agreed to make. Again, it's a Labour-run council, and does not serve the public interest as its real priority.

While it is possible that there are one or two decent Labour-run councils in our country, I for one wouldn't put any money on that turning out to be the case. As far as I can determine, they are all rotten to the core; and these two reports show only a part of the story in just two such councils at this one moment in time. The totality is no doubt hundreds if not thousands of times worse overall!

Remember this: Labour is garbage, always has been and always will be. With that in mind, one cannot go far wrong!

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