Tory-controlled Devon County Council has announced £6 million of budget cuts, with the worst cuts earmarked for childrens services and transport. In a time of dire job shortages, careers advice is slashed by £600,000 and £122,000 has been cut from services to help pregnant teenagers. The Council hasn’t yet specified what else is to be cut, but no doubt public transport and upkeep of roads will also suffer. This is on top of massive cuts announced last December, and will cut services not just to the bone (that was already the case under New Labour), but to the marrow.
Yet again, cuts demanded by the Con-Dem coalition will hit those that neither prospered in the ‘boom’ times or caused the mess of the financial crisis. They are busy collecting massive bonuses and dining with their minister friends. It is not inevitable that these cuts occur. Even a Tory-controlled council can be pressured into making concessions, though it will ultimately take a national movement against cuts to throw out the rotten coalition, whose only principle is ‘Government for the millionaires, by the millionaires’.
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