The cold winter weather ( minus 5 yesterday) has numbed both my fingers as I scrape the frost off the car but also my mind. Although that might be numbed by two 11 hour days at work and evenings sat in Community Centres smelling of sweat and urine listening to Councillors justify the city council budget proposals to a disinterested audience.

I’m not a supporter of the current administration ( Labour)and something is wrong here. The Leader of the Council is obviously playing politics with his 100 million cuts over three years  proposals, but then again I would expect him to play politics. But the talk the other night of community organisations taking over services was both naïve and a little opportunistic on the part of at least one of the councillors. The same one who has his own business based in the city  valley and led residents of a  god-awful estate to set up their own ( and ultimately doomed) company to run it. It sounds like lots of arms length “community” businesses/ mini quangos all run by people made redundant at our expense on huge pay offs and pensions running the same services with less accountability and for profit. Thats maybe what the government wants. I didn’t think Labour councils wanted it too.

Meanwhile on I go trudging through the compacted snow, across ice to give the good news to people that their income is going to be cut by this Government.