both nationally and locally the Con Dem cuts are making the poor, the elderly and the vulnerable suffer.
While the banks appear to get away scot free.
We watched as bankers put this country and the world into economic meltdown.
Northern Rock, RbS, Lehman brothers, Ice Save. The banking system began to collapse like a pack of cards.
The world economy on the edge of the abyss.
The Tories said “ let them fall. Do nothing. The consequences. banks unable to give savers their cash. Firms unable to pay their staff. 5 million out of work.
Labour acted: and we stopped the worst financial crisis of the last 50 years becoming the second great depression.
That’s the part of history that the Tories want you to conveniently forget.
Rather than the bankers being the cause of the crisis.
They want to blame it on the teachers, the nurses, the policemen and the care workers.
In 1997 our deficit was 42% of GDP. before the banking collapse under Labour it had reduced to 35%.
but saving the banks, and plunging tax receipts meant britain had to borrow.
britain borrowed for the bankers.
but the Tories want to blame the new hospitals, and the new schools, for our deficit.
It’s a Tory and Liberal Con.
Looking at the Council’s proposed budget it feels like we are going back to the 1980’s. back to Thatcher.
First Thatcher’s Tories and Liberals increased VAT, this time to 20 per cent in a budget which hurt the poorest hardest.
Next Swindon had to accept deeper cuts to our budget than our wealthier neighbouring Councils.
Our two Tory MP’s who claimed that they would secure a better deal for Swindon should hang their heads in shame.
And in the budget presented by the Council, who’s paying the price of the banker’s crisis?.
Tories. Thatcher’s Liberals. Hitting the poorest the hardest.
An only when you apply Thatcher values do you end up with a Tory Council wasting £500,000 on a failed car parking subsidy with one hand, while they cut vital bus services on the other.
They can subsidise parking spaces but they can’t subsidise buses.
It makes no economic sense, no environmental sense.
Instead of this budget, Swindon needs a plan of action:
A plan for the economic growth of Swindon.
A plan that creates the jobs of the future. That brings Green jobs to Swindon.
A plan for building a more resilient economy. We were too exposed to financial services as an economy. Let’s learn that lesson fast.
And a plan that invests in the skills of Swindon. That delivers a University for Swindon.
That should be at the heart of an economic plan for Swindon.
We have a Con Dem coalition which is soft on the banks, hard on the poor and bad for growth.
Thatcher’s Tories and Thatcher’s Liberals are cutting away fairness and hitting the poorest hardest:
Hurting the young, children, the elderly and the vulnerable.
Together we must stop them and build a plan for the economic growth of Swindon.
Together we must fight for fairness and build a better future for Swindon.