UNISON march and rally - 6th November

The local branch of UNISON are holding a rally and march on 6th November in opposition to the cuts at Somerset County Council.  The rally will be held at 10.30am in French Weir with the march at 11.00am. 

This needs to be publicised at widely as possible to try and get a good turnout to show the Conservative group the level of opposition in Taunton and Somerset to the cuts they are proposing. 

I will be writing a fuller post on the Comprehensive Spending Review and the actual cuts in Somerset soon but for the moment here is a link to the letter that the Chief Exec at SCC sent out to all staff.  Here is the UNISON response.

More after the break.

The main point to emphasise is that for reasons of their own the Tory group are going further and deeper than even the national coalition government - zero borrowing, no raising of Council Tax, reduction of the deficit in three years rather than the 'challenging' four years nationally and a fire sale of council assets .  Unison are rightly concerned about the impact on their members but the damage to public services of this will also be devastating and we'll be living with the consequences for years to come.  It's difficult to quantify the full scale of the impact as some of the detail is only gradually being put together but what is becoming clearer is of a massive withdrawal of services across the board and not just in areas one would expect from Tories.  For instance one of the Tories key manifesto commitments was to improving the highways infrastructure in Somerset but it now looks like even this promise will be broken.  Clearly this view is also held within the Tory group as the Cabinet Member for Environment, Anthony Trollope-Bellew resigned last week in disagreement at the level of cuts and reduction in maintenance.

This is what he had to say regards the cuts:

 "I find this unacceptable. I can't even accept the financial logic," said the Tory councillor, who represents Watchet & Quantocks.
"There will be a saving of £35 million but in three years' time there will be a backlog of £203 million. That is an independently attested figure.
"There will be 96,000 extra potholes and whether whoever is in control in three years' time will be able to put the roads back to the state they are in now I very much doubt.
"The effect will be felt for years to come. I believe we need to continue to borrow as the lesser of two evils.
"If we don't, the road surface will contribute to deaths and serious injuries."
Mr Trollope-Bellew said the council would be spending only 20 percent of what is needed on maintenance.

All in all pretty damning stuff.  Two other cabinet members appear to have also stood down from the cabinet.

At this point pressure needs to be maintained on both the Lib Dems and the Tory councillors to make them aware of the damage these cuts will cause in the local community.