Budget for Death

As.

As we face huge cuts to our social services and healthcare...

Government spending plans will test the NHS and social services in England to the limit, according to a report by the Commons Health Select Committee.


The MPs say the plans assume efficiency savings on a scale never before seen in the NHS, or in other countries.

(BBC Web site)

As we see huge reductions in budgets to our Universities and Schools...

Prof Steve Smith, head of Universities UK – suggests £3.2bn will be cut from university teaching budgets and a further £1bn slashed from research.


The losses are equivalent to some 57 per cent of the £7.3bn funding universities received directly from the state this year.

(Daily Telegraph)

As we watch our police force being substantially reduced...

Last week ministers unveiled plans to axe police stations and more than 150 courts to save millions from the criminal justice budget.


But experts predict that the 25 per cent cuts needed across Whitehall will lead to the loss of 35,000 police officers, 20,000 civilian staff and 4,000 community support officers.

(The Daily Mail) 

As we see many of our safeguards and protections taken away...

Liverpool Council has announced 100% funding cuts to Rape Crisis. Liverpool Rape Crisis helped 522 women last year with a meagre £60,000 funding from Liverpool City Council.

(Touchstone blog, reported widely elsewhere)

As we watch support for key environmental measures being eroded, increasing the likely impact on us of local and global climate change...

(Subsidies for Solar panels removed in this week’s budget)

As vicious reductions are applied to the fire service, to the armed forces, to libraries, to playschemes, to litter collection, to local parks services and to the Arts (actually the single most productive – in terms of income generated - part of the economy)...

To air-sea rescue, to community transport, to day centres, to the prison service, to legal aid...

There will be 547,000 fewer people each year getting help to resolve legal cases that matter to them and who can't afford their own legal advice. Many of them will be about family matters but they will also involve redundancy, housing, and debt which are all bound to get worse in the public sector squeeze.

(The Guardian)

To drug rehabilitation schemes, to the BBC, to youth clubs, to the disabled...

And as inequalities across society increase and increase again...

And as we discover, that if we are lucky enough to have a job, we are going to have to work harder, for longer, for less money...

Isn’t it nice to know we can still afford a foreign War?