June 17th 2010 Day 37

Slash and Burn #2

I cried when I watched Channel 4 News tonight. 

Jobs to go. Futures will be ruined. Lives wrecked.

And for what? Cuts driven by ideology not economics.

Broken Promises

Apparently in the election campaign the LibDems and the Tories promised not to cut the funding for the new hospital in North Tees and Hartlepool. Today they cut it. 

Transparent Government

Channel 4 News invited the government to have a minister interviewed tonight. 

They refused.

Liam Byrne, Shadow First Secretary to the Treasury steps up to the mark

"Both the country and the Liberal Democrat party beyond will be aghast this afternoon at your attack on jobs, your attack on construction workers, your attack on the industries of the future and the cancellation of a hospital. 
 

Let me ask you: what could be more front line than this? In five minutes this afternoon you have reversed three years of Liberal Democratic policy of which you were the principal author. What a moment of abject humiliation." 

He also said the spending projects being axed amounted to just 0.05% of government spending, "nailing the myth" that Labour had operated a "scorched earth" policy in the run-up to the general election.

Kyrgyzstan

When we teach about the genocides of the Holocaust, Bosnia and Rwanda, one of the students will always ask 'Why didn't anyone do anything, Miss?'

What will we answer this time? 'Oh, we were too busy watching the World Cup'....

The British Red Cross have donated £100 000 from their Disaster Fund to help in Kyrgyzstan. Unicef are monitoring the situation with seven representatives on the ground.

We cannot afford to ignore this.