Decade of Tory cuts has had devastating impact on society A party for the privileged few
THE problem of knife crime has featured in several reports and articles in the Examiner recently, and the ‘Bin the knife, save a life’ campaign has been launched in response to this.
I would not like to venture a definitive view on exactly what has caused this problem, but one thing which has definitely not helped – and which I don’t think has had much of a mention in the reports and articles in the Examiner so far – is the real damage done to the fabric of society by the decade of austerity which various Conservative governments have put the country through.
A really good example of this is what happened to youth services run by councils across the country.
There is a pretty long list of services which councils have a statutory duty to deliver.
This almost inevitably meant a disproportionate share of the huge reductions in expenditure councils had to deliver in the previous decade to avoid going bust fell on their non-statutory services, one of which is youth services.
That was certainly the case with Kirklees council. Back in 2010 Kirklees council ran a thriving youth service, but it was significantly scaled back in the last decade as part of the enormous savings the council needed to make to deal with the reduction in government funding it received.
By the end of the last decade this had reached the thick end of
£200 million per year.
I think it is generally accepted that if young people don’t have things to do and keep them occupied, they are far more likely to get into bother, and I am afraid we are now paying the ‘real price’ in all kinds of different ways of the decade of austerity the Conservatives inflicted on our country.
‘What a sorry state of affairs’, via email
My patience is running thin
I WATCHED the response of French people to the decision of the government to raise the age at which people can retire on state pensions.
Politicians protested in the parliament by singing the national anthem and there was rioting and widespread civil unrest. People took to the streets and there is no sign of this stopping soon.
The pension reforms raise the age from 62 to 64. In the UK the Tory government increase the age almost yearly and people don’t care!
Or at least that’s the impression I
Feedback, Huddersfield Daily Examiner, Office 6, Photon House, Percy Street, Leeds, LS12 1EG Or letters@examiner.co.uk get as the increase is usually done on the quiet. I find it difficult to see what would so excite the people of the UK that we would take to the streets and protest in a similar way to the French.
Corrupt politicians, we don’t bat an eyelid! It’s what we expect these days. Incompetence in high office. No bother, what can we do anyway? Rivers turning into open sewers? Not a problem.
There are times that I wish our long-suffering patience would disappear and then politicians might just stop abusing our trust. Trevor Woolley, Linthwaite
Ukraine aid is so appreciated
ON WEDNESDAY, March 15, thanks to the amazing generosity of people in Huddersfield, 25 tons of vital supplies left St Andrew’s Motors, Leeds Road, to be transported by truck to Ukraine via Poland.
This substantial donation has been assembled and coordinated by Tim of St Andrew’s Motors and the local Ukrainian Club.
The lorry was provided at no cost by Harvey Transport of
Bolton and was specially painted by them with the words “Huddersfield to Ukraine Humanitarian Aid” along the sides of the trailer.
All of the above reflects the heartwarming gestures and nature of local folk in the midst of the current dreadful situation prevailing in Ukraine.
Well done to everybody concerned – it is so much appreciated.
Write to:
THE complete economic failure of the Conservative governments of the last 13 years was laid bare by the report in Tuesday’s Examiner on information produced by the Resolution Foundation (an independent think-tank) which shows the average worker in our country is now £11,000 per year worse off due to wage stagnation since 2008.
Is it any wonder we have recently been experiencing a large wave of strikes and protest groups like ‘Enough is Enough’ have emerged?
The Resolution Foundation’s conclusion that ‘This is not what normal looks like, this is what failure looks like’ seems to hit the nail right on its head.
At the heart of all of this is a real lack of economic growth since the Conservatives took office in 2010, when comparison is made both with what has previously happened in our country, and also with the economic growth experienced in many other developed countries during the last 13 years. Although things like Covid and the war in Ukraine have clearly not helped, other manifestations of the economic failure of the Conservative governments include us all now facing what will be the highest tax burden this country has experienced since the days of World War Two, a national debt which was around £1 trillion when the Conservatives took office in 2010 now racing rapidly towards £3 trillion (and already pretty much the same size as our entire annual economic output), and the country now going through what is the largest reduction in its standard of living since records began to be kept for this in the 1950s.
It is not all bad financial news though – if you are in the top 1% of earners in the country at least.
In the recent budget the government came up with a significant amount of money to fund a large tax break on pension contributions for all such people. Are you surprised? No, me neither.
This just helps to underline, yet again, a lot of what the Conservative Party is really all about – the party ‘for the privileged few and not the many.’