We had a Council meeting last night where more savings were agreed but it looks like another £17m of savings will be required to balance the books for the financial year starting April 2011.
The context of the savings is obviously the national debt. I have said before that bankers and socialists got us into this mess but neither are doing much to help us get out of it. What with bankers still trying to pay huge bonuses and socialists, at least on Sefton Council, being in almost complete denial of the situation it falls to others to try to stop the Country sliding towards the position of Greece or Ireland and the Council from going bankrupt.
I supported the actions of the last Labour Government when it bailed out the banks as the alternative was complete economic collapse. Now we are dealing with the consequences of that bail out as the bill is in effect being paid by huge cut backs in public services. Such was always ging to be the case and I accept the cut backs in public services have to take place as there is no longer enough money to pay for them. Labour, however, on Sefton Council adopt the view that the savings don’t have to be made. In saving the banks their Party, when in government, set in train the cuts that we are having to make now. I would add, as I have said before, that Labour should have turned off the money tap well before the last election; their spending and borrowing just added to the problem and increased the savings needing to be made now.
Socialists, real ones who want a socialist state of common ownership, were amongst those protesting at the meeting last night and I respect their views whilst not agreeing with them. They want a socialist economy but we live in a capitalist one. You can’t have socialist policies in a capitalist economy; it just does not work. Thereby hangs the conflict that can’t be resolved. Of course Bootle’s unreconstructed socialists who sit on the Council want what the socialist protesters want but they are bright enough to know that they can’t deliver it. It does not stop them playing to the crowd though, pretending that if Labour were in power they would not be making savings. Labour are running with the hare and the hounds.
The savings in Sefton will be and are massive; no one wants to make those savings that impact negatively on our diverse communities. But what we want and what has to be done are two totally different things. Last night Labour proposed that around £1.6m of the identified savings to date be not taken forward but they did not identify where another alternative £1.6m of savings would come from. When challenged their response was silence. Denial, as this surely was, will only lead to greater and bigger cuts having to be made with more Council employees being put at risk of their jobs being lost. As a trade unionist myself I find that Labour aproach totally unacceptable.