Local Government hardest hit by austerity cuts

Once again local government was the big loser in Wednesday’s 2015/16 Spending Review. DCLG funding grants to local councils will be reduced by £2.1 billion down to £23.5 billion, a cut of 8.2% excluding inflation. The TUC points out that as not all council spending comes from central government, this is expected to result in an overall reduction in local government spending of 2.3%
http://touchstoneblog.org.uk/2013/06/local-government-funding-to-be-slashed-again-in-2015

Spending Review - What about us?

The latest Spending Review does not need a particularly detailed analysis to reach an inescapable conclusion - the current government has no economic agenda but it does have an ideological one.
   Only a Tory optimist could believe that this country is in any way approaching “recovery”. For the coalition at the receiving end of public spending cuts - those who have seen their wages and salaries plummet in the past five years, those working households whose wages are on poverty level and who depend on tax credits, families who rely on child benefit, those who rely on disability benefits, there is no recovery. For all those dedicated public workers whose jobs have been slashed there is no recovery. There is only more of the same for us.

2015/16 Spending Review - an ever tightening noose around Labour’s neck

There’s much media hype today about the Chancellor’s announcement of spending plans for 2015/16. As Professor Colin Talbot notes on his Whitehall Watch blog, given that every previous such announcement since 1998 has been adjusted in subsequent budgets they might be taken with a pinch of salt.
    But now that the Labour leadership is signed up unconditionally to the Coalition spending plans if elected in year one - following the May 2015 General Election (as Ed Balls and Ed Miliband both confirmed at the weekend) - then this is a win-win day for the Tories and Lib Dems.
   Snuff out any alternative to their cuts programme and lock in austerity well into the next Parliament. As yesterday's FT editorial said about the spending review - 'the Tories are setting the parameters of the political debate ahead of the election':
http://whitehallwatch.org/2013/06/23/the-politics-of-spending-review-2013-why-now-why-at-all/