Rishi Sunaks the Tory Party’s Mr Wonderful's drive to pay for the costs of the pandemic from your refuse collectors and care workers pockets isn’t seen by some media gurus as the wrong thing to do. However for those who are living in communities where the closure and offshoring of traditional industry began during the Thatcher regime turning society into a service industry jungle, those public sector jobs mean a lot.
Austerity over the last decade has reduced the public sector non-NHS workforce by over a third and among the two thirds who have survived, seasonal or part time working has become the norm, with the public very accepting that their streets aren’t clean, full of potholes and their parks are overgrown but the big losers in areas of endemic underpay are children.
Sunaks decision to slash public sector pay and his Governments ‘stagnation not growth’ policies have led to over 1/3rd of all children now living in poverty and that's before hard Brexit hits our shores.
In Northumberland Labour’s Councillors are fully engaged fighting against the Poverty on a daily basis,three of them have chatted with us. Eileen Cartie form Blyth who works in the third sector and has families attending the Centre she works in seeking advice regularly, Lynne Grimshaw from Bothal Ward who has been helping to ensure people in need aren’t bypassed by society and Liz Simpson whose Town of Newbiggin by the Sea has the highest rate of children living in poverty across the whole huge County of Northumberland. All three were keen to point out how this damage to society in general has grown out of all proportion since 2010.
Eileen Cartie said: “During the last decade we have seen the removal of ESA from young people, the Bedroom Tax, Government attacks on the disabled, the introduction of Universal Credit a damaging stretch in retirement age a shortage of much needed social housing whilst the prime growth areas over the last decade have been in food banks, charitable giving TV shows, child poverty, private landlords, slum living and a massive growth in loan sharking. In fact people now ask, what was the welfare state?”
Echoing Eileen, Lynne Grimshaw told us: “The Tory Governments handling of the pandemic has greatly increased pressure on public sector services, everything from Job Centres to Citizens Advice services, as banks are perched to foreclose on families who either the Government haven’t helped or are waiting their post furlough redundancy notice.” “Luckily most people are aware that these Tories if given half a chance would remove the word ‘Compassion’ from all dictionaries but as we move into the second decade of ruinous for society and business Austerity, there task will be made ever easier as Libraries are now facing a very difficult future indeed under the Conservatives and their never ending Austerity program” .
Cllr Liz Simpson said: “I believe the biggest crime facing the nation is the media spin and sentimental statements from this twisted Tory regime who do not care, weasel words such as ‘Hard Decisions’, ‘Get Brexit Done’ ‘Build Britain’ do nothing to put reasonable quality shoes on childrens feet, or bread on the table for those families striving when there's five weekends in a month. Developing poverty instead of top class highly paid jobs and cutting the pay packets of low paid public sector workers whose incomes support businesses in small East Coast towns like Newbiggin by the Sea is beyond me and certainly show a complete lack of Christian values from our democratically elected representatives in power”.
