How do you feel about 'the cuts'

[trevnhil]

Well most of you will have had a little time to digest the governments latest 'cuts'

What do you think about them. How are they likely to affect you, or indeed the town of Morecambe.??

I will say that to me they are indeed quite severe. BUT because of the ever increasing spiral of debt that the UK is in something like these measures was needed. As an 'outsider' it may seem easy to say, and I can see that it is going to affect just about everyone.

Come on.... have your say. But please respect other members points of view .

[mpprh]

A rather novel approach not seen in UK for the last few years ..... trying not to spend money they haven't got !

Peter

[accykeef]

The UK has been going down the tubes for many years. Our manufacturing industries have been destroyed with a mixture of red tape and cheap foreign imports. Many of those imports have been manufactured using machinery sourced in this country and the unions saw to it that firms could not compete with those imports.

The banks also played a large part in the demise of our economy. Banks world wide have been having 'boom times' for a good number of years but their lending to everyone, regardless of their means to pay back has come back to haunt them. Goverments throughout the world have been forced to bail out their banks but with only a few exceptions, the banks continue to pay their workers bonuses. I always believed that a bonus was a reward for helping to increase the bank's pile of shillings. It appears the bonuses are awarded even if the bank is in deep financial doo doos. In that case, they are not bonuses but tax free salary which is taking the rip out of the tax system.

As for the cuts which local authorities are being forced to make, I feel sorry for the Councillors who have to decide where to make the savings. They really are between a rock and a hard place.

Where should the axe fall?
We are currently spending millions on unwanted war games in Afghanistan, I wonder if we are doing any good or just setting ourselves up as future targets. We deplore the use of IED's on our troops yet we fully supported their use against the Germans in WW2. I don't see the difference between the 2 occupations other than we believe we are the good guys.

We could save a fortune if we scrapped the House of Commons and took advantage of video conferencing although the Government would put it out to tender and that would no doubt be won by Johnny foreigner and cost much more than the annual Westminster budget for Jammie Dodgers.

The worrying thing is that when the economies of many countries take a nose dive, there is civil unrest and this can lead to the emergence of radical leaders. The next stage to that is countries fall out with their neighbours and the battles begin.

[WillowTheWhisp]

There are a couple of things which annoy me in 'the current economic climate'. One is this affair of the bonuses paid to bankers which you mention Keef. They claim they are justified because they are helping to get the economy out of the mess - even if that were true seeing as how they helped create the mess in the first place surely they should be doing everything possible to redeem themselves and not be claiming any kind of reward for doing so.

The other thing is the money set aside for totally useless things which could be better spent elsewhere. I know this doesn't actually affect Morecambe but there have been some towns in Lancashire which have been blessed with a 'panopticon' costing hundreds of thousands of pounds under some misguided claim that these things will bring prosperity to the town. The one in Blackburn was simply a vandalising of something which already existed, a cannon battery in the park, and despite there being signposts to it I have yet to find a local who is even aware of it let alone people coming into the town from elsewhere just to see it. It hadn't been long finished before it was covered in graffiti. Burnley has a 'singing ringing tree' which neither sings nor rings and cannot be seen from the town as it is way out on the moors. Rossendale has a sort of iluminated spaceship affair which can be seen from the top road going from our house to Haslingden but only if you really know it's there. The closer you get it disappears behind houses. Accrington was offered a series of concentric circular ditches on a hilltop which would have been visible to a few passing pigeons - it was declined. At the same time there is derelict and tatty property in all of the towns where the money could have been better spent and the roads are in a chronic state - yet I am told the money is designated for these arty-farty projects and not for mundane things like filling in potholes or tarmaccing a back alley so the bin men can get up there.