I was listening to the news today with growing incredulity.
Early on I heard that councils throughout the UK were expected to make big savings over the next 5 years. A survey, carried out by the BBC and concentrating mainly on England (surprise) but also having effects in the Celtic countries, showed that most councils expected to lose large numbers of jobs, and could expect to see severe reductions in services.
The first cuts will affect the least essential, but still important services like leisure, parks, swimming baths, libraries, etc., but old people’s accommodations and social services cuts cannot be ruled out as time goes on. Birmingham in England, the second largest local authority in the UK expects to lose 2000 jobs, and cannot realistically expect to do this with voluntary redundancies and recruitment freezes.
I was reflecting that at least locally, libraries play a vital part in the lives of some of the poorer people in the city. They provide facilities for those who have no internet access at home. Kids who need to use the net to access information for school projects, unemployed people looking for work, older people who can’t afford computers and wouldn’t know how to set them up use the facilities of libraries throughout the town. They host reading groups for young children and facilities for people with learning difficulties; they run courses more easily accessible and less daunting than the college or the universities. And for some it is a warm place to sit on a cold day. And imagine
closing down swimming baths, or reducing access to them, just as we were being told that the Olympics in London were going to be of immense benefit to us all; likewise all the other sporting facilities provided by the local parks department and the community centres.
As I reflected I thought about why we are in this recession. Of course (sorry Danny) it’s all America’s fault... according to Brown, but I have a recollection of Northern Rock having a loan book that even a Glasgow moneylender with access to leg breaking equipment wouldn’t touch. And I remember that RBS was up there lending to people who hadn’t a hope in hell of paying the money back, and who would make restitution to the bank only on the sale of their now much more expensive property....until, woops, the property bubble burst. So no, it was our bankers as much as it was theirs.... Much of this mess is down to bankers and financial institutions.
So I’m betting you can imagine how I was feeling tonight when I noticed that a certain Mr Gulliver of HSBC was awarded a £9 million bonus on top of his £800,000 base pay for “exceptional performance" in trebling the profits of his division to $10.5 billion.
OK this is an extreme case and HSBC didn’t take money from the government, but all over the banking sector, it’s back to business, like all this silliness of the last few years never happened. Last week, Stephen Hester, chief executive of RBS gave up his bonus but the state-owned bank revealed it paid at least two of its bankers more than £7 million in 2009.
It’s another of these moments when you ask yourself.... is this a dream? They were greedy; they got into a mess; we bailed them out; because we have bailed them out we don’t have any money and we have to do without basics; and they got greedy again.....
OK. I know it’s not quite that simple, but it’s not far off....
Early on I heard that councils throughout the UK were expected to make big savings over the next 5 years. A survey, carried out by the BBC and concentrating mainly on England (surprise) but also having effects in the Celtic countries, showed that most councils expected to lose large numbers of jobs, and could expect to see severe reductions in services.
The first cuts will affect the least essential, but still important services like leisure, parks, swimming baths, libraries, etc., but old people’s accommodations and social services cuts cannot be ruled out as time goes on. Birmingham in England, the second largest local authority in the UK expects to lose 2000 jobs, and cannot realistically expect to do this with voluntary redundancies and recruitment freezes.
I was reflecting that at least locally, libraries play a vital part in the lives of some of the poorer people in the city. They provide facilities for those who have no internet access at home. Kids who need to use the net to access information for school projects, unemployed people looking for work, older people who can’t afford computers and wouldn’t know how to set them up use the facilities of libraries throughout the town. They host reading groups for young children and facilities for people with learning difficulties; they run courses more easily accessible and less daunting than the college or the universities. And for some it is a warm place to sit on a cold day. And imagine
closing down swimming baths, or reducing access to them, just as we were being told that the Olympics in London were going to be of immense benefit to us all; likewise all the other sporting facilities provided by the local parks department and the community centres.As I reflected I thought about why we are in this recession. Of course (sorry Danny) it’s all America’s fault... according to Brown, but I have a recollection of Northern Rock having a loan book that even a Glasgow moneylender with access to leg breaking equipment wouldn’t touch. And I remember that RBS was up there lending to people who hadn’t a hope in hell of paying the money back, and who would make restitution to the bank only on the sale of their now much more expensive property....until, woops, the property bubble burst. So no, it was our bankers as much as it was theirs.... Much of this mess is down to bankers and financial institutions.
So I’m betting you can imagine how I was feeling tonight when I noticed that a certain Mr Gulliver of HSBC was awarded a £9 million bonus on top of his £800,000 base pay for “exceptional performance" in trebling the profits of his division to $10.5 billion.
OK this is an extreme case and HSBC didn’t take money from the government, but all over the banking sector, it’s back to business, like all this silliness of the last few years never happened. Last week, Stephen Hester, chief executive of RBS gave up his bonus but the state-owned bank revealed it paid at least two of its bankers more than £7 million in 2009.
It’s another of these moments when you ask yourself.... is this a dream? They were greedy; they got into a mess; we bailed them out; because we have bailed them out we don’t have any money and we have to do without basics; and they got greedy again.....
OK. I know it’s not quite that simple, but it’s not far off....
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