1052 Hrs GMT
London
Thursday
16 September 2010
Editor © Muhammad Haque
BHANGEELAAR! Campaign against an elected mayor in Tower Hamlets brings tidings retailed by the Evening STANDARD: CONDEM CUTS are coming! And the Council is set to cuts 'services' that people pushed into poverty need and depend on. Not the salaries of “Dr” Kevan Collins or his many “directors”! The latest inquiries by UK centrally organised trade unions have confirmed what we had already known in essence: “Dr” Kevan Collins is on a salary over £200,000 a year as Tower Hamlets' town clerk.
NOTHING that any peddler of ‘a’ ‘case’ for dismantling the existing semblance of democratic accountability in Tower Hamlets has said suggests that things will get at all any better by having an elected, executive mayor.
Indeed, signs are that the idiotic likes of Steve Bullock will TELL the people in Tower Hamlets what is the ‘good way for us to embrace CONDEM cuts”. It was Bullock, after all, who ‘adorned’ the stage that Jim F’patrick, Ken Livingstone and Keith Vaz found any number of excuse to avoid in person on Tuesday 14 September 2010.
[To be continued]
from the LONDON EVENING STANDARD web site:
30,000 jobs at risk as London's town halls face £2bn budget cuts
Pippa Crerar, City Hall Editor16.09.10
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Town halls in London are expecting budget cuts of up to £2 billion over the next three years, putting jobs and frontline services at risk.
An Evening Standard analysis found they could lose as much as £100 million each as Whitehall cuts begin to bite. But local government experts warned that the final figure could be much higher and up to 30,000 jobs could go as a result.
London's 32 borough councils are expected to charge more for services such as meals on wheels and swimming pools in order to plug the funding black hole. Inner London boroughs such as Islington, Camden, Tower Hamlets and Southwark, which have the largest settlements from central government, will be the hardest hit.
Town hall chiefs have warned that services such as education, leisure, roads and housing could all be at risk from the average 24 per cent reduction in grants. Tens of thousands of council staff are already facing a two-year pay freeze and an end to gold-plated pension schemes. Many councils have started cutting back with 400 posts in Lambeth going by April, 300 in Havering over the next five years, while up to 500 will go in Sutton.
About 275 jobs are at risk in Camden while Hammersmith and Fulham has already cut 600 posts.
London government expert Tony Travers said: "Many are already preparing for cuts of around 25 per cent to their budgets and that will mean some very hard choices. It is possible that the reduction in spending could be even bigger than £2 billion.
"They could face not just one or two years of spending going down but four or five. It would be surprising if there is not a further reduction in jobs of up to 30,000 over the next few years."
Most councils have already made tens of millions of pounds of in-year savings.
Some, such as Camden and Islington, are considering sharing senior management teams while others, like Westminster and Hammersmith, are sharing services such as education.
The cuts will be particularly painful as town halls will not be able to raise extra funds through council tax, which Chancellor George Osborne is planning to freeze for a year. All but four London councils decided to freeze - or in some cases cut - the tax this year.
A separate survey by London Councils of treasurers at the 32 boroughs found they are expecting to have to make an average of 24 per cent cuts by 2014. The savings range from nine per cent for outer London to as much as 34 per cent for inner.
The local authorities currently spend £22 billion a year.
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