It seems the trades union dinosaurs are hankering for yet another futile re-run of the 1980s, and actually expecting public sympathy. There’s a similar situation among local publicly-funded service organisations, according to a report from the BBC debate on the forthcoming spending cuts, held in West Bromwich…
“many council leaders and representatives of public sector unions and regional quangos are not ready to debate about how to deal with cuts, where efficiencies in local public services could be made and what should be prioritised. It wasn’t a discussion between users of public services – members of the public – at all, but between spenders of public money, all with an interest in protecting their pots of funding.”
Given the government’s timescales, some cuts are likely to have to be made quickly. The sort of attitudes seen above risk encouraging ‘blind panic’ cuts at the local level, in which arts and culture might suffer disproportionately. Maybe some of them really think the TUC is somehow going to ride to their rescue, and the public will take to the streets and join the last stand of the old Trots. Maybe they don’t even know how to look at cuts outside of a political lens. I was reminded of a recent podcast of a round-table on university cuts, where a participant said that in local councils the real powers on sudden financial cuts tend to lie with two or three 20-year olds with spreadsheets, who are the only ones in the council with the tech and maths savvy to actually run the financial numbers.
