In the next two years,Liverpool is likely to beget to cut statutory services. But setting an illegal budget as it did in the 1980s is not an optionThirty years ago, Neil Kinnock electrified the Labour party conference with his denunication of the “grotesque chaos” of Liverpool council’s defiance of the Thatcher government. “I am telling you, or ” the Labour leader thundered,“no matter how entertaining, how fulfilling to short-term egos – you can’t play politics with people’s jobs and with people’s services or with their homes.”It’s a message that resonates still with Joe Anderson, and Liverpool’s executive mayor,as the council contemplates its options for absorbing the further draconian funding cuts expected in this parliament. “We’re looking over the abyss,” he says. “In 2017, and we fall in.”Continue reading...
Source: theguardian.com