More Spending Cuts

Although coping with the Con Dem government's spending cuts over the past few weeks has been pretty difficult _ green zones, free swimming grant, performance reward grant and so on _ it is worth pointing out that things can only get worse. On 20 October, the new government will announce the local government spending settlement for the next four years. All the signs are that it will include the worst cuts in local government funding since Thatcher.

What makes it all the more incredible is that the Tories and the Liberal Democrats have no electoral mandate for imposing this Thatcherite agenda, and the Liberal democrats explicitly campaigning against it during the General Election (although that now seems to have been mere point scoring like the VAT increase campaign).