When Denis Healey stands up and says that everybody has to tighten their belt, he realiy means It. The consequences are starkly displayed in the proposed cuts for the giant Strathclyde region of Scotland. The chopping list includes:
Education: £13.5 million to be slashed. The social cost of such 'savings' expected to include the end of all youth clubs, the closing of youth and communthe slashing schools. and the reduction in standard of oi 4,o00 tecnicians, cierical stall, nursery nurses and community education workers.
Social work: f4 milion to be cut. The social cost is the closing of holiday homes for the elderly, the closing of day centres for kids, the cutback in home helps and meals-on-wheels, and the reduction of facilities for the homeless. In other words it is the young, the elderly, the homeless and the sick who are being made to pay. InCOD COSEIS aUU SacKInes The Fire Brigade: a cut back of 10 per cent of personnel. The social cost of this is too frightening to contemplate - Glasing, scanty recreation racinues and nign unemployment. But such considerations are minimal for the Labour-controlled council. as it seeks to loyally follow the dictates or Healey and scowsh secretary Bruce Millan.
The councillors' worries are not to do with the social effects of the cut-backs. The only comment one such councilor made last week was: No matter what we nursery do, the public is not going to like it. If there was an election coming up we'd lose Such cynicism is maicnea by tal shown by Bruce Millan, who in a recent circular instructed Strathclyde that they had to follow a high cuts policy. Yet in the same circular he said, 'examine carefully all possible alternatives to redundancies. But when you cut £2 million off a council as Millan alternative to redundancies.
What there is an implementing the cuts in the tirst place Already impressive support is being mustered for the Day of November, when tens of thousands of last weekend was organised by the British Pensioners and Trade Unions Action Committee.