The scale of cuts in spending proposed by Osbore means the wasting away of the hardest hit departments. They're even visited in health which is supposed to be protected but is seeing crowded A&E,hospitals in growing debt excessive pressure and ambulance delays.
All that in a protected department. Those facing big cuts will see a collapse in morale coupled with a growing pay discrepancy, vacancies unfilled and growing staff turnover as the more competent leave first and the quality of the staff declines as the high paid are fired and cheaper less experienced staff brought in. Fees will increase in every available way such as charges for licences services parking and using toilets.
Some services will be put out to cheap tenders. There'll be constant reshuffles distortion of results to make things seem better than they are. Delays will grow, morale will collapse and fiddles and crime will grow because of the lower chances of detection. Friction will grow with every group or provider the department works, complaints will rise Fewer will be dealt with but spurious statistics will pour out claiming that the public are more satisfied, that suspensions push people into jobs when they're really condemned to misery. Or crime.
Rubbish won't be collected as regularly, the overstretched police will become social workers of last resort taking their eye off crime,care homes dependent on low wages will close, Labour's achievements like Sure Start, family intervention and poverty reduction will be eroded, and the BBC will decline in quality and coverage. And parents: parents will think twice about family size since third and fourth children don't get credits.
All this takes no account of the misery which is to come when interest rates are raised as they will be. A nation which has struggled to maintain its spending during the long years when take home pay has stagnated is going to be badly hurt and required to cut back when rates go up by even the small increase and the gentle progress upwards which we're promised.
The government wont do anything about all this. After all if public services get worse and worse they provide every excuse for abolishing them altogether. The slimmed down state wont be a happy one .It may not be what you voted for but its the future neo-liberalism offers you.
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