For the entirety of my career in public services — two decades now — we’ve operated in austerity mode.
Every financial year since I joined, we’ve lived with the threat of cuts or actual cuts.
Listening to talk of the need to make further cuts to balance the books really does perplex me.
They call these “efficiencies” but there’s nothing efficient about them.
All you end up with is a low-paid, low-skilled, demotivated workforce, so inefficient as to make you cry.
Our services could not get any more threadbare. Mostly, they operate on goodwill.
Half of the services we may traditionally have provided are now being palmed off into the Third Sector.
What’s left: services operating in crisis mode, hopelessly trying to fill their catastrophic number of vacancies.
Unless you have a serious vocation to serve and care for others, why would you not take the better-paid job elsewhere?
Look all around you. The state of disrepair in all that you can see.
The broken roads. The overgrown verges. The litter-filled alleys.
What about what you experience when you need it?
The long waiting lists. The missed diagnoses. The lack of support.
But whoever gets elected in July will only deliver more of the same.
More efficiencies, more cuts. More promises of a Big Society.
In other words, continued austerity. More of the same.
Last modified: 12 June 2024
