Against the cuts? Then it’s time to join the marchers

Published: 3 February, 2011

• IT was good to see Neil Kinnock, a former Labour Party leader and now a local resident, signing the Islington Hands Off Our Public Services (IHOOPS) petition against cuts in public services (Has Kinnock broken party ranks? January 28).

Other residents should follow his example by joining IHOOPS to campaign against damaging Tory-Lib Dem government cuts to services and for progressive alternatives such as investment in services and jobs and cracking down on tax avoidance.

Readers can do this by joining our march at noon on Saturday outside the Odeon cinema in Holloway Road, by lobbying the council at Islington town hall, in Upper Street, on the evening  of Thursday, February 17, and by supporting the TUC march in central London on March 26.

I would urge readers to attend these events and join IHOOPS at info@ihoops.org.uk and help us oppose cuts to people’s vital public services.

GARY HEATHER
Joint chairperson, IHOOPS

• THE deficit is costing us more than £120million a day and the Con-Dem government is attacking us all by slashing our human rights to education and decent health care, destroying jobs and stunting economic growth and only showing a very little saving from it.

It’s absolutely appalling that there is no serious plan in operation to drastically reduce the deficit without savage cuts hurting people, the environment and the economy. 

Our defence against the real threat of terrorism has actually been cut, as many immigration officers at airports and ferry terminals have been made redundant and the police will be slashed. 

The Con-Dems say we must renew Trident at a wasteful cost of £90billion. Did anyone tell them the Cold War finished in the late 1980s with the break-up of the former Soviet Union, so why not scrap Trident? 

The war in Afghanistan is a waste of life and money. If the might and regional knowledge of the Soviet Army could not defeat the mujahideen how then can we beat the CIA-trained Taliban? 

And can we really afford to pay billions of pounds every year to keep troops there?  

There are also hundreds of billions of pounds in uncollected taxes from the rich and billions of pounds in unpaid fines not even pursued for in the courts. 

More taxes could even be introduced for the rich to raise more revenue to pay off this deficit. 

It’s time we had more common sense policies.

MARK STILL
N5 

• ANYONE who thinks this round of cuts and redundancies will be the last is mistaken. If the government gets away with these, it will come down even harder next time. It is determined that we bear the brunt of the crisis caused by the bankers and those at the top.

A lot of people seem to think that, with the present level of debt in the country, these cuts, painful though they are, are something we just have to accept. Others, like a lot of councillors, are trying to justify the cuts but avoiding the worst cases. As a result we are getting different groups fighting each other in an effort to avoid being the ones to suffer.

The New Economics Foundation estimates that up to £100billion of public money is lost annually through tax avoided, evaded or uncollected.

This enormous amount of money is owed mainly by the transnational corporations, the bankers, other financiers and extremely wealthy individuals. 

This world of high finance is almost incomprehensible to most working-class people. To them, someone earning around £1,000 a week is “rich”. But for the people at the top of society, this is chicken feed. While we ignore these people and put up with our lives being disrupted, they will get off scot free.

What can we do about it? Well, there’s a limit to what writing polite letters, going on peaceful demonstrations, and so on can achieve. We need to take some direct action. 

What form that direct action takes is up to the people themselves to decide. 

What has got to be made abundantly clear is that, if cuts are to be made, they must be made at the top of society, not at the bottom. After all, where does all their wealth come from, except from the labour of those they employ? There is no other source of wealth.

P WAGLAND
Brecknock Road, N19