From Sue McMahon

Wednesday, 16 February 2011

Many thanks to all who attended the rally on Saturday 12 February.

Photos and film of rally can be found here.

Next step lobby of Calderdale Council Monday 28th February 5.15pm.

149 jobs set to go
52 of those in Calderdale Children and Young People services.

We have collected over 2000 signatures for our petition against cuts and hope to table it at this meeting, support the lobby.

 

From Chris Day

Thursday, 24 February 2011

As False economy has pointed out, on 15 Feb 2011 Calderdale Metropolitan Borough Council 'issued formal notice that it intends to fire 4,500 council staff and is halving their redundancy pay.' This will be a major blow for both employment and quality of life in this valley.
The same website also notes that 'Calderdale & Huddersfield NHS Foundation Trust plans to cut the equivalent of 444 full-time staff posts between 2010 and 2013. The reduction of posts is likely to be split 47 percent in clinical posts and 53 percent in non-clinical posts. The Trust runs the two main hospitals in Huddersfield and Halifax - Huddersfield Royal Infirmary and Calderdale Royal Hospital.'

Yesterday's Guardian reported that overall 'More than 50,000 jobs are disappearing from the NHS, according to freedom of information responses, which reveal for the first time the extent of cuts by local health trusts struggling to save £20bn from their budgets.'

We are told these are efficiency savings. For example, the coalition has been comparing Britain's mainly publicly-owned health system adversely to those of the other European Union states, singling out France in particular. This is just not the case. See this article, based upon a report by Professor John Appleby, chief economist at the King's Fund 'think tank'. It shows how until Britain's National Health Service began to be undermined by the introduction of market forces, the UK's health system was not only very much cheaper than the health systems of the other wealthy developed countries, but was also accompanied by better outcomes. 'French spending on healthcare, per person, is over one quarter higher than it is in Britain. In spite of this health care in Britain actually compared very favorably with France.'

George Osborne wrote in 2006 on the wonders of 'The Irish miracle, and how can we in Britain emulate it?'. Obviously, he has been proved wrong on Ireland but refuses to accept this. This piece from the New Statesman explains clearly why he is wrong now. The planned program cuts are not only unnecessary, but will also undermine economic growth.

So much depends on revealing the truth about the Conservative-Liberal plans for cuts and privatisation. We must be united in serious opposition to all the cuts and privatisation plans of this austerity nightmare.

From David Telford

Monday, 17 October 2011

The problem with such a sweeping statement is that there has to be cuts in spending. The current spending levels were not sustainable even in periods of reletive growth. Indeed, even when Gordon Brown had apparantly ended the ycle of boom & bust, the deficeit was proving difficult to finance.

A cursory glance at the situations vacent sites suggest that some public services are nice to have rather than necessary. From an economist' point of view, spending should be focusd on areas that can create growth, sadly for some people providing 'nice to have' public services, that will mean their jobs are going but it will be to the greater good.