Public sector cuts
At last the immutable truth has been spoken - Scotland (and the rest of the UK) faces huge cuts in public expenditure to pay for the excess of the past few years and the current economic crisis.
Make no mistake, this is going to happen. No let me correct this, this needs to happen, and any Government that fails to face this is only going to exacerbate this problem.
Some 4 years ago, I predicted that the growth in public spending was going to cause a huge problem for the public finances, and that the public sector was going to have to face the prospect of huge cuts in its budget.
I had no idea that the credit crunch was coming too, but the underlying problem remains - we are spending too much on the public sector, and there needs to be cuts to balance the books.
The exact same problem would face whoever was in Holyrood, simply because the size of the settlement is dictated by Westminster and the money just won't be there to fund the expenditure.
Talk of 6,000 jobs being lost across the entire public sector is dramatically understating the cuts that will need to be made, and I would suggest that double that number is more realistic, allied with a complete review of public sector pensions and benefits. That equates to around 60 jobs in the Western Isles.
Some of this might be mitigated by other methods, but the bottom line is that those savings will be necessary - and will be imposed despite the Concordat - for the Council, Health Board and the others to make the books balance.
Make no mistake, tough times are ahead, and the Tories are going to inherit an unholy mess that they will use as the justification for deep cuts in public expenditure, and Holyrood will be forced to dance to the same tune.
A rebalancing of public finances is utterly necessary, but that's not going to ease the pain we will all feel.
Make no mistake, this is going to happen. No let me correct this, this needs to happen, and any Government that fails to face this is only going to exacerbate this problem.
Some 4 years ago, I predicted that the growth in public spending was going to cause a huge problem for the public finances, and that the public sector was going to have to face the prospect of huge cuts in its budget.
I had no idea that the credit crunch was coming too, but the underlying problem remains - we are spending too much on the public sector, and there needs to be cuts to balance the books.
The exact same problem would face whoever was in Holyrood, simply because the size of the settlement is dictated by Westminster and the money just won't be there to fund the expenditure.
Talk of 6,000 jobs being lost across the entire public sector is dramatically understating the cuts that will need to be made, and I would suggest that double that number is more realistic, allied with a complete review of public sector pensions and benefits. That equates to around 60 jobs in the Western Isles.
Some of this might be mitigated by other methods, but the bottom line is that those savings will be necessary - and will be imposed despite the Concordat - for the Council, Health Board and the others to make the books balance.
Make no mistake, tough times are ahead, and the Tories are going to inherit an unholy mess that they will use as the justification for deep cuts in public expenditure, and Holyrood will be forced to dance to the same tune.
A rebalancing of public finances is utterly necessary, but that's not going to ease the pain we will all feel.
6 comments:
I can think of some dead wood in the White House (some of it already with one foot out of the door) that if they were gone wouldn't make one iota of difference to anyone's lives.
So, let's look long and hard at the White House and find some performance measures that will really sort out the wheat from the chaff.
How many councillors are there? Thirty-three. What's the population of the islands? About 23,000. That's one councillor for every 700 of us. Scandalous. West Lothian Council has 32 councillors for a population of 169,000. A council of 15 would still make us over-represented.
So, we can do one of two things. Campaign to reduce the number of councillors or get better value from the ones we have. I for one greatly look forward to the sight of Maroot emptying my bins and Keith Dodson mowing the sports fields.
@ Gerty
That's already the plan, isn't it? Not Maroot and the bins but the merging of wards was the first step towards reducing the numbers - next time we will be electing just one in place of our three councillors. Did I dream that?
Anon 12:51
The original plan was to reduce the number of Councillors to 20 and increase their salaries.
The salary increase (basic up from from £6,000 to £15,000) actually happened, but the workload has barely changed as the Councillors have split the multi-member wards into the old wards and still look after the same number of residents.
There is currently no plan to reduce the number of Councillors.
Ah. In that case, I'm outraged again.
But don't you think they are worth their £15k minimum salary plus full pension. Come on you must all feel so much better off since they were elected.
Don't you??!!
You just don't appreciate everything that is being done on your behalf in that Ivory Tower.
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