The public good: just another 25,000 jobs or the gradual erosion of our society?

According to BBC News, local authorities may be looking to save money by cutting up to 25,000 jobs. Councils are keen to assure residents that job cuts will not affect so-called front-line services, but rather managerial and back-office posts.

This is far from comforting.

In a country where public services are already over-stretched and under-funded, these cuts will drop local provision below acceptable standards. There are already potholes in our streets, which are already dirty. Our parks are not well cared for. Teachers do not feel valued. Provision for the elderly, the homeless, and the mentally ill is already sketchy.

Even if local authorities are right, and the only jobs to go will be administrative, this means less support offered to front-line staff, less oversight, less quality control, slower responses to requests and complaints from the public, and less strategic planning. In short, cost-cutting exercises of this type will only sow the seeds of a larger disaster in the medium- to long term future.

So what can we do?

The last thing we should do is to continue ‘covering’ for our councils and central government – however good or bad or needy they are. Third sector voluntary agencies are excellent at noticing gaps in provision, or in providing something extra, different, or experimental. Their role is not to replace statutory provision. Neither should members of the public or local communities fill the gap, either through individual/voluntary action, nor through optional top-ups to public funds. Local service provision is the job of local government.

The second-to-last thing we should do is to sit tight. Doing nothing is what got our country into this state in the first place. So we cannot be silent, or passive. We must speak out!

Fortunately, systems still exist in the public sphere for exactly the kind of feedback I am envisaging.

1. Writing to local government organisations (city council and county council), protesting any cuts to their services – front-line or otherwise. We will not be fobbed off by the false distinction! Local government should be urged to petition central government, while we as citizens do the same.

2. National government has a responsibility to support local government, particularly in order to even out inequalities in the demographic make-up of each geographical area. This is exactly the kind of injustice that will be exaggerated under Conservative proposals (such as easyJet-style top-ups for optional services).

Where mechanisms for the fairer distribution of wealth already exist, they should be used. Where they do not exist, they should be created. If national government can bail out commerical banks, thus guaranteeing the wealth of senior executives and city brokers, why can’t it see council services as ‘too important to fail’, and bail them out too? If government fails to do this, it is sending the message that some rich people are more important than the ordinary citizens of this country.

Worse, it is saying that the fabric of our society is not worth saving. It is the end of society as such and the (re)introduction of a rabidly antisocial capitalist model. Therefore I will also write to my MP, saying precisely this.

3. Where are the political parties that stand for a fairer society, and the protection of essential services? They should be found, or created, and joined en masse!

4. What is the press doing to check the plans of Labour and Conservative MPs who would dismantle our local government services unchecked. I will therefore also write to the press.

5. Direct action? Any ideas?

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