Dear Editor, your readers will have seen this week the headlines Lib-Dem council chiefs condemn cuts referring to a letter co-signed by the leader of South Somerset District Council, Tim Carroll.
They won’t be pleased to hear though, that the letter does not in fact ‘condemn cuts’. It merely points out that local authorities think the cuts they are having to make are unfair (and they don’t like Eric Pickles, Tory Communities Secretary). The cuts for everybody else are okay, though.
We all acknowledge the deficit, but there is more than one way of dealing with it.
Ruthless cuts are an ideological choice made by Conservatives, Lib-Dems and Labour. For Lib-Dem Council Leaders to moan about the ‘pace and scale’ of the cuts is still a pro-cuts, pro-austerity choice.
The Green Party, many unions and some economists have consistently proposed alternative choices:
- Cracking down on tax avoidance and tax evasion, saving billions every year
- The wealthiest people in society paying a fairer share
- Saving £100bn over 30 years by scrapping Trident and its proposed replacement
- A windfall tax on bank profits as well as a heavy tax on bankers’ bonuses
It would mean reducing the deficit more slowly and thus avoiding these savage cuts. We would switch funds from high-carbon to carbon-reduction spending (for example, away from motorway-building and into public transport), and other ways of generating funds such as a green investment bank.
We would invest heavily in a Green New Deal – a major plan to kickstart the post-carbon economy while creating 1,000,000 new jobs and training places. And the new jobs would in turn bring in extra revenue to support public spending.
The cuts supported by our District Council Leader will, instead, cost the country a million jobs.
Greens and many others would prefer the Coalition government to make the ideological choice of fairness and sustainability, not the one that is destroying our public services and punishing the poorest people in society.
Ben Hartshorn
South Somerset Green Party
Visit our website – http://somerset.greenparty.org.uk
Visit our blog – http://somersetgreenparty.blogspot.com
