Budget Day - The Aftermath

Well the budget was passed without amendment to the surprise of absolutely nobody. Graham Chapman said it was the hardest budget he had ever worked on because following cuts he had nobody to add the numbers up for him so he had to do it himself. Hoho. Just my little joke Cllr C.

The Post is reporting that plans for the Victoria Leisure Centre were discussed at greater length than the proposed job cuts. Strange cos I don't remember seeing that on the agenda and will presumably come as a surprise to campaigners against its demolition who weren't expecting anything until the Area 6 Commttee meeting when a design will be chosen for approval by the Council's Executive Board later that month. Not got the minutes yet so I've no idea to what extent it was discussed.

The demo against the cuts seemed reasonably well attended, helped no doubt by the appearance of Sam Morton who gave an emotional plea for reconsideration of the plans. She struck me as absolutely sincere and about as far from the typical rent-a-quote celebrity as its possible to get. One of the other speakers raised a chuckle by suggesting that if there was any money left NCC should spend it on Horlicks because they'd need all the help they could get to sleep at night.

In a rare feature here are a few pics from the demo;



Demonstrators



Catchy slogan




Sam Morton



The demo from afar

One of the key criticisms by the unions is that rather than actually increasing the spending on chilfren's services all they are actually doing is increasing the budget to the level they actually spent last year, when they significantly overspent. I have already commented on the fact that 200 odd redundancies was being spun by the council to being an investment in services for the vulnerable but this seems to me to be a spin too far.