Bradley Allsop, student member, Green Party in today’s Huffington Post online:
“David Cameron came under fire recently for what was perhaps the second most bizarre story to emerge about him this year (no prizes for guessing the first), when he seemingly chided his own council for following his own policies to their logical conclusion. Decrying the loss of ‘frontline services’ by his own local Oxfordshire council, he suggested that they instead attempt to find more ‘back-office savings’, even offering to set up a meeting with Downing Street advisors to help them do so. Commentators make much of the ridiculousness of Jeremy Corbyn disagreeing with his own front bench, but it’s something else when you speak out against your own policies. Never has there been a clearer example of a politician aloof to the impacts of his own decisions. Mr Cameron simply fails to understand the destruction austerity is reaping across the country he is meant to serve- his economic approach is causing irreversible damage to local communities and the future of British society.
Many services are simply disappearing entirely, and those that are not are either being hoisted upon volunteers (commenable in terms of giving local communities more control over their services, but at times woefully unable to provide the same level of skill and commitment as paid, trained staff) or put into the hands of private companies where profit, not provision, is the priority.
Already I see austerity eroding away many things I have held dear in my life, be it threatening the provision of local libraries that have provided such a nurturing of my own creativity and provide so much more to so many others, or the loss of staff and courses in my university due to reduced government funding. Other areas are suffering too; parks and other recreational facilities that are crucial for both physical and mental wellbeing, youth centres that give young people purpose, direction and community and the social services that protect vulnerable communities. In a damning report by the poverty-campaign charity, the Joseph Rowntree Foundation, cuts to local services have been shown to be exacerbating and entrenching inequality, disproportionately hitting the most deprived areas where spending is, ironically, needed most. These cuts are setting in motion a damaging process of widening class divisions with impacts that will ripple throughout many generations.”
East Devon Watch 