Councillors are anxiously awaiting the government’s (delayed) autumn statement due to be delivered next week by the latest entrants through the revolving doors of 11 and 10 Downing Street, Jeremy Hunt and Rishi Sunak.
The early signs are that we can expect Austerity 2.0 despite public services already on their knees, and residents facing towering inflation and living costs.
We are undoubtably in a cost-of-living emergency, a situation where we are concerned about the most vulnerable in our city surviving the winter.
Residents are reporting an increasing sense of pressure from trying to support family members and fear for the future.
Some are
• going without food to save money for rent
• disconnecting the gas to save money
• avoiding cooking to save energy costs
• unable to pay their rent or mortgage
…
We know that there will be unsustainable pressure on already oversubscribed public services and our NHS and we are afraid that many will die.
So where is the government rescue package to help the most vulnerable residents and invest in local businesses dealing with soaring costs?
Sadly, neither empathy nor care characterise this tired, worn Tory government which is bereft of ideas after 12 years of running the country into the ground.
Instead, they are promising more swingeing budget cuts and tax rises, in the shape of Austerity 2.0, at a time when a recent study found that Conservative cuts since 2010 contributed to 335,000 excess deaths.
The Conservatives keep telling us that they need to plug a £40 billion budget black hole but this simply reflects the government’s ideological pursuit of its own arbitrary targets which many economists have described as totally “irrational”.
Rising inflation, post-pandemic recovery and an energy crisis worsened by Russia’s brutal invasion of Ukraine are affecting countries around the world – yet others are not mercilessly cutting spending and making the cost-of-living emergency even harder for their residents.
The EU is introducing a windfall tax on the record profits of energy companies and the US is introducing a stimulus plan based on wealth taxes and government investment.
Meanwhile, our government chooses once again to target the most vulnerable by ripping up the social security safety net and slashing even more public services on which we all depend.
It doesn’t have to be this way. Tax Justice UK has proposed five policies targeting the wealthiest in society, those with the broadest shoulders and least affected by rising living costs, that could raise £37 billion.
The government could be looking at wealth taxes, taxing assets, capital gains and windfall taxes on energy companies.
Instead, the Tories are bumbling from one proven failed ideological economic strategy to another, from Truss’s discredited “trickle down economics” to a second stab at lethal austerity with Sunak.
The Conservatives are simply too reckless, too unimaginative and too callous to manage the British economy. Our residents desperately need a Labour government. They need a general election.
Councillor John Alcock is joint leader of the Labour opposition on Brighton and Hove City Council.
Maybe concentrate on local issues as a ‘local authority’ councillor.
Perhaps Green-Labour could stop wastingm our taxes on vanity schemes with no defined benefits, look at reducing costs (such as the council’s 26 headcount communications/propaganda social media team), and increase revenues by encouraging more profitable businesses and visitors to come here?
Do you think car bans, LTNs, reduced parking bays, and increased parking charges helps?
You could then freeze or even consider reducing council tax and helping residents, or will you look to increasing then by the largest possible and blaming the government as usual?
BTW Any guess when you will get all of your staff back to work?
Meanwhile all the local residents are paying for Labour (Momentum) supporting the Green fruitcakes. Perhaps if Labour had more councillors like Hamilton and Atkinson, they would support local residents, like they are supposed to?
Perhaps stop wasting money. £200,000 on critical race theory training in schools for example. Perhaps also encourage the work shy to get jobs as the hospitality industry is desperate for staff and only 43% of people in this country pay income tax which should help. Also, stop encouraging drug addicts from around the country on the city of sanctuary scheme to move to the city which destroys the town centre and then means the council has to pick up the tab for the care surrounding them.
Agree 100% with Dave.
And STOP WASTING TAX-PAYERS’ MONEY ON VANITY PROKECTS THAT NO-ONE WANTS!!
And in the local elections, VOTE CONSERVATIVE !! It’s the only way to keep out the money-wasting loony left…
Seconded !