We all know the story – Suffolk has to make 30% cuts and all because of those naughty bad bankers and the UK’s mountain of inherited debt.
Right?
Wrong!
The Lib Dems have discovered that Suffolk county council only needs to make cuts of 11% IN TOTAL over the next four years to balance out the reduction in central government grants. This means cuts of less than 3% a year.
Which means that the administration used their huge Tory majority to plan cuts that were THREE TIMES as savage as they needed to be!!!!
How have they managed to spin this? Simple. They expect us to be not very good at our sums and not to check the facts and their figures. Pretty much like someone trying to sell you dodgy double-glazing or an unnecessary insurance policy.
They have estimated that the amount of money they would get from the government will be reduced by 33.3% over 4 years (because of the Comprehensive Spending Review). That is, they assumed that Suffolk would have to manage on two thirds of the current central government grant.
In point of fact the reduction in central government funding will be just over 26% over four years (not 33.3%) which is much less of a hit. But this is just the thin end of their mathematical shenanigans.
BECAUSE the government grant makes up much less than half of Suffolk County Council’s total income. And the rest of this income is not going to reduce at all. In some cases it will rise.
When we did the sums, the reduction in Suffolk’s total income over the next four years was NOT a big noisy 30%, it was less than 11%. That’s a very big difference when you are talking about closing and selling off care homes, cutting school crossing patrols and closing the park and ride!
The news that SCC are deliberately quoting grossly inflated figures to support their unjustified claims that the county needs to make vast savings is appalling. How can any Councillor, of whatever political allegiance, so give up on their responsibility to their electorate as to go along with this wicked charade?
The Chief Executive and Council Leader must be hoping to blind people with (false) science and counting on public apathy and ignorance to push their nefarious schemes through.
Unless we all wake quickly up it will be too late to prevent a series of disasters to the fabric of society. This may sound an exaggerated response but I am afraid it is if anything understated.
I am also very worried about the level of public apathy across the county, Sally. (Though due to Lib Dem leafletting in Suffolk Coastal, there appear to be a lot more well- informed people in east Suffolk than there may be in other parts of the county )
If you watched the BBC Daily Politics coverage of the county consultation on tv yesterday :
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-politics-11788204
you will see how few people in Bury St Edmunds appeared to be interested or informed on the matter. And this was on the very day the county was doing a roadshow iin Bury, ntended to raise ‘ public engagement’ (whatever that means)!
To be fair, I think a lot of this apathy is only because ‘New Strategic Direction’ is such a bland uninformative name. What do people do when they hear the phrase? They switch off.- with a name like that, it can’t be anything worth bothering about, can it? What does it mean? How can it affect me? Just another bit of bureaucratic jargon.
Its only when people realise that it will impact on themselves personally that they begin to worry. If they were calling it (more accurately) the PCD – the “Privatise, Close or Divest” initiative – many more people would suddenly become alarmed.
Now, I wouldn’t go so far as to suggest for one minute, that the administration planned things this way. But I will say that referring to this initiative as the New Strategic Direction – a name that could mean almost anything and describes absolutely nothing – has been very convenient to the administration in supporting public apathy. A public apathy that is almost incredible when you look at the potential seriousness of this situation!