Chancellor's Spending Review Allows Local Government To Wield The Axe

http://www.talktalk.co.uk/news/pa/uknews/2010/10/21/cuts-will-hit-poorest-harder.htm

It was the Chancellor, George Osborne, who yesterday stood up and announced the long-awaited cuts in public spending the Coalition insist are necessary to reduce the huge budget deficit they inherited from the last Labour Government.

Local Government appear to be the hardest hit, with a huge 7% cut in the grants they will receive from Whitehall.  This will mean that it will be local councils and not the Chancellor, who are each left to decide what vital services they will cut, which will undoubtedly have a devastating effect on the most vulnerable and the least well off.

George Osborne has left it to :Local Government to do the Coalition's dirty work for them. But does he really think that voters won't ultimately blame him when they start to feel the effect of these draconian cuts?

Not only that, the reductions in spending will mean as many as 490,000 public sector workers will lose their jobs over the course of this parliament.

The Conservative-led Coalition once again have been driven by doctrine and their obsession with reducing the role of the state. 

And in fact, some business leaders have said that by reducing the public sector so quickly and so drastically, this could in reality have a very detrimental effect on the private sector.

Stephen Alambritis, of the Federation of Small Businesses, has said that the spending cuts annouced by the Chancellor could actually be counter-productive. Speaking in an interview with the BBC, he said that for every 100,000 jobs that will be lost in the public sector in the next few years, 60,000 will go in the private sector.

So far from being a recipe for promoting continued economic recovery, these spending cuts will surely lead us into a double-dip recession.

History has shown us that that is exactly what will happen.