Here is an extract from a budget speech, given by a UK Group Leader in a 2011 council budget speech.
I’m pleased that we’ve got people in the gallery to listen to the debate. But the people I would like to see up there aren’t there.
I would like to see up there Mr Mayor some of London’s casino bankers here today to witness the havoc they are causing in our communities.
We may even have been able to persuade them to part with some of their million pound bonus to fill some of the potholes that are gonna be left unfilled, to help some of the vulnerable older people that are going to have more services than they will currently have, because of the bankers.
Let’s make no mistake about this, it was because of the bankers unregulated behaviour of playing the equivalent of roulette and losing, that has resulted in the significant cuts in public spending.
Clearly a Labour politician, ducking responsibility for the huge “structural” deficit, using both the politics of envy and the suggestion that it wasn’t at all the fault of the state spending but of activity in the private sector, making excuses for the cuts they are about to make.
This politician can be found here
http://www.kirklees.public-i.tv/site/player/pl_compact.php?a=53800&t=&m=wm&l=en_GB#the_data_area
As regular readers may have guessed, this is not a Labour politician I am highlighting, but a Liberal Democrat (Cllr Pinnock at 0:35:15) .
It is sad that none of the three main party speakers spotted that it was the overspending of central government that left the black hole – more money out than in – that resulted in the cuts. Sure, the financial sector squeeze and the credit crunch has resulted in recessionary pressures and tax revenues falling even further short of expenditure budgets, but the plain fact of the matter is that Gordon Brown and his maxing out of the public credit card caused the public spending situation we find ourselves in today.
The Liberal Democrat councillors in Kirklees need to get the basics right before indulging in standard left wing monotony in regretting that the size of the state – ie the amount of money forcibly taken from ordinary working peoples’ pockets – cannot be simply increased on a year by year basis.
On a related note, the curious thing from this budget debate was that the “opposition” appeared to be the 4th party Greens – as Kirklees is a hung Council, the necessity of gaining wider party agreement prior to the actual meeting was clear!