Budget cuts
Feb. 5th, 2011 03:58 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
thedarkprojectAh, government cuts. Is there a more divisive issue?
Local cuts to the budget that covers shelters for the homeless appears to have become a massive issue, but with a few interesting nuances. The BBC's Mark Easton covered some of the argument between Nottingham City Council and the Government in his blog entry here, which gets straight to the point, saying that "Framework has initiated judicial review proceedings against Nottingham City Council and the Department for Local Government and Communities claiming it is "caught in the middle" of a blame game between local and national politicians." And indeed, dig a little further and this seems to be exactly what you see. The Government claim the cut to the budget was 10.7% - the council claim it was 45%. Who is right?
This has raged for a few weeks now with councillors and ministers trading barbs and insults, with the occasional interesting tidbit showing up. The other day saw this: "The Communities Secretary Eric Pickles fired a salvo over the Labour-council's reluctance to publish all spending over £500. For starters, [Housing Minister] Grant Shapps singles out the £250,000 spent on lamp post banners, which promote the council's ambitions for the city. There was criticism over sending six officers to Cannes for a Europe-wide property fair."
One local drop-in centre, Emmanuel House, was the subject of a short article on the BBC the other day (sorry for all the BBC links), which highlighted the risks to the service users and also the potential for increased anti-social behaviour, etc. But buried at the bottom was this little gem of a statement: "[...] we have assessed the service provided by Emmanuel House and don't believe the outcomes meet the level of funding we provide. Services for rough sleepers and other homeless people have changed substantially over the past decade with a greater emphasis placed on prevention. As a result of the Government cuts, we need to accelerate the restructuring of the services we provide for these vulnerable citizens." This looks remarkably like an implicit admission that the Council wanted to cut this particular service anyway, considering that it wasn't good value for money, but has now got the opportunity to do so while blaming national government for it. Intriguing!
(Interesting technological aside: Mark Easton's blog entry doesn't show up if you search for the content in it, eg. http://www.bbc.co.uk/search/?q=%22Nottingham%20City%20Council%22 . I clicked the 'Contact us' link at the bottom of the BBC website to report this problem, which took me to www.bbc.co.uk/feedback/. On there is a link for 'Website technical faults', and if you follow that, it tells you to use the 'Contact us' link on the page. Er, how do you think I got there? So now I have two problems to report to them, if I can ever find a way.)
Library cuts are also big news, with there being a national day of action taking place right now, It says "We want everyone who cares about reading, literacy and libraries to use their public library on the 5th February and tell as many people as they can to do the same.", which is a great sentiment, but I can't help but feel that if these libraries were getting used as much as they should be that councils wouldn't have earmarked so many for closure. A similiar thing happened here when the local council started closing down leisure centres (long before this Government's cuts, I should add) - lots of people were sad at losing a local amenity, but it was one few ever used.
Maybe part of this is just cultural change. A lot of the things I would once have gone to a library to do, I no longer need to do. I can use Google and Wikipedia for most of my basic research, and the collapse/banning of the Net Book Agreement, the resulting plethora of discount book shops, and sites like Amazon, have meant that I now buy a lot of books that once I might have borrowed. And the type of books I want to read have changed too, with that having an impact on the usefulness of libraries to me. Both my previous university's library and the public library were awful, bordering on useless, when it came to having computing books that were even remotely up to date. This isn't too surprising really, since an institution that is dedicated to preserving knowledge for long periods of time is always going to struggle when faced with subjects that are often antiquated and indeed bordering on obsolete by the time that a book on the matter hits the shelves. And do you need a physical book anyway, when looking at reference material? Even the best index is a poor match for an electronic search.
At this point I'd suggest that perhaps libraries need to modernise and change their offerings to the public, but I am almost entirely sure that my librarian friends would call me out on my ignorance and point out that, if I ever went to a library, I would already see such diverse offerings and modernisation. :) But I guess these things just aren't made very clear to the public. Are we making the most of the services that our taxes pay for? Do we even know they exist? That is at least one thing that this day of action might solve; people might go along for the first time in months or years and notice something useful that they didn't know was there.
How many people should benefit from a service for it to justify getting significant public funding? I'm reminded of the parallel argument over Educational Maintenance Allowance, where many 16 to 18 year olds were paid an extra £30 to encourage them to stay in education or training, but where the increase in participation as a result only rose by 10%, and where it's reported that the majority of those being paid said they would have gone anyway.
Difficult questions, in these times when money is tight.
Local cuts to the budget that covers shelters for the homeless appears to have become a massive issue, but with a few interesting nuances. The BBC's Mark Easton covered some of the argument between Nottingham City Council and the Government in his blog entry here, which gets straight to the point, saying that "Framework has initiated judicial review proceedings against Nottingham City Council and the Department for Local Government and Communities claiming it is "caught in the middle" of a blame game between local and national politicians." And indeed, dig a little further and this seems to be exactly what you see. The Government claim the cut to the budget was 10.7% - the council claim it was 45%. Who is right?
This has raged for a few weeks now with councillors and ministers trading barbs and insults, with the occasional interesting tidbit showing up. The other day saw this: "The Communities Secretary Eric Pickles fired a salvo over the Labour-council's reluctance to publish all spending over £500. For starters, [Housing Minister] Grant Shapps singles out the £250,000 spent on lamp post banners, which promote the council's ambitions for the city. There was criticism over sending six officers to Cannes for a Europe-wide property fair."
One local drop-in centre, Emmanuel House, was the subject of a short article on the BBC the other day (sorry for all the BBC links), which highlighted the risks to the service users and also the potential for increased anti-social behaviour, etc. But buried at the bottom was this little gem of a statement: "[...] we have assessed the service provided by Emmanuel House and don't believe the outcomes meet the level of funding we provide. Services for rough sleepers and other homeless people have changed substantially over the past decade with a greater emphasis placed on prevention. As a result of the Government cuts, we need to accelerate the restructuring of the services we provide for these vulnerable citizens." This looks remarkably like an implicit admission that the Council wanted to cut this particular service anyway, considering that it wasn't good value for money, but has now got the opportunity to do so while blaming national government for it. Intriguing!
(Interesting technological aside: Mark Easton's blog entry doesn't show up if you search for the content in it, eg. http://www.bbc.co.uk/search/?q=%22Nottingham%20City%20Council%22 . I clicked the 'Contact us' link at the bottom of the BBC website to report this problem, which took me to www.bbc.co.uk/feedback/. On there is a link for 'Website technical faults', and if you follow that, it tells you to use the 'Contact us' link on the page. Er, how do you think I got there? So now I have two problems to report to them, if I can ever find a way.)
Library cuts are also big news, with there being a national day of action taking place right now, It says "We want everyone who cares about reading, literacy and libraries to use their public library on the 5th February and tell as many people as they can to do the same.", which is a great sentiment, but I can't help but feel that if these libraries were getting used as much as they should be that councils wouldn't have earmarked so many for closure. A similiar thing happened here when the local council started closing down leisure centres (long before this Government's cuts, I should add) - lots of people were sad at losing a local amenity, but it was one few ever used.
Maybe part of this is just cultural change. A lot of the things I would once have gone to a library to do, I no longer need to do. I can use Google and Wikipedia for most of my basic research, and the collapse/banning of the Net Book Agreement, the resulting plethora of discount book shops, and sites like Amazon, have meant that I now buy a lot of books that once I might have borrowed. And the type of books I want to read have changed too, with that having an impact on the usefulness of libraries to me. Both my previous university's library and the public library were awful, bordering on useless, when it came to having computing books that were even remotely up to date. This isn't too surprising really, since an institution that is dedicated to preserving knowledge for long periods of time is always going to struggle when faced with subjects that are often antiquated and indeed bordering on obsolete by the time that a book on the matter hits the shelves. And do you need a physical book anyway, when looking at reference material? Even the best index is a poor match for an electronic search.
At this point I'd suggest that perhaps libraries need to modernise and change their offerings to the public, but I am almost entirely sure that my librarian friends would call me out on my ignorance and point out that, if I ever went to a library, I would already see such diverse offerings and modernisation. :) But I guess these things just aren't made very clear to the public. Are we making the most of the services that our taxes pay for? Do we even know they exist? That is at least one thing that this day of action might solve; people might go along for the first time in months or years and notice something useful that they didn't know was there.
How many people should benefit from a service for it to justify getting significant public funding? I'm reminded of the parallel argument over Educational Maintenance Allowance, where many 16 to 18 year olds were paid an extra £30 to encourage them to stay in education or training, but where the increase in participation as a result only rose by 10%, and where it's reported that the majority of those being paid said they would have gone anyway.
Difficult questions, in these times when money is tight.
