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Wirral against the Cuts are demanding:
The next full council meeting is on Monday 9th February, where a vote will be taken. Labour and Lib Dem councillors are being lobbied in the runup to the meeting. Please support the lobby of the council meeting called by Wirral TUC and Wirral Against the Cuts: 5pm Mon 9th February Wallasey Town Hall. Bring banners, placards, whistles. I have uploaded a leaflet to the merseyactivist files section - please use it (http://uk.groups.yahoo.com/group/merseyactivist/files/ - look for Save_Our_Services.pdf). From the leaflet: Despite the fact that 35, 000 people responded to the council consultation on the cuts Wirral council have announced that they intended to go ahead with their immediate closures of 11 libraries. Then 2 swimming pools and 49 community resources will be closed or given to community groups to run - either now or at some point in the next 2 years. They decided not to close 3 libraries but added in another 2 which hadn’t even been included in the consultation. Some local councillors claim to be against the cuts but what exactly will they do about it. So far not one of the councillors have been prepared to vote against their party line. This despite consultation meetings and lobbies involving over 2000 people. The provision of local services were won over years of campaigning with people rightly saying that local services should be provided on the basis of need not about whether they make a profit on your business plan. Yet our councillors haven’t even got the bottle to put their hands up in a meeting to try and save them - pathetic. If they continue with these closures then they will not get voted in again. They are clearly hoping we will forget what they have done by the time elections come round, but we won’t forget, we won’t vote for them and where possible we’ll stand against them. By 2011 they plan to make £3. 4 million in cuts by getting rid of assets, closing community facilities and contracting out 900 jobs in social care and transport. They are prepared to make these cuts to save a few million pounds. £85 million has been ‘invested’ in the Hamilton quarter. Once they get rid of Pacific Road and the tram museum they will have nothing to show for it. They spend vast amounts of money renting school buildings from private companies (it must be high because it is considered too ‘sensitive’ to tell us how much). They now plan to make cuts of £3. 4 million and ‘invest’ £20 million, which they will borrow, on new state of the art buildings with of course no guarantees that it will be any more use than the last ‘investment’ or when they’ll built. No ‘community transfers’ Allowing community groups to own the buildings mean the council is not required to maintain buildings or services. They also then stop being owned by the community as a whole and ours to decide their uses in the future. Such resources should be maintained by the council. No Privatisation That the council’s desperation to hand over land and our resources to Peel holdings is embarrassing. It shows that they are blinded by the promises of glitzy buildings and forget that all these companies are interested in is making a quick profit regardless of the communities it destroys. Rubbish Politics These aren’t the actions of intelligent people trying to do their best in difficult circumstances. The political agenda of (the once) Labour Party, Liberals and the Tories (in case anyone is stupid enough to believe they care about working class people) is private profit before public need in both national and local politics. We say the needs of the local community must come first not their attempts to make profit, which of course they are also hopeless at. Oh, and just in case anyone has forgotten, all of these usually free market politicians agree that we can hand over billions to the banks without any democratic control and without any idea if it will do any good yet they can’t find a few million to maintain services that really affect peoples lives. Support Each Other These cuts can be stopped if we organise together. If we just try and defend our own service we will loose. We need a co-ordinated response to the attacks involving the trade unions, local groups and individuals. In the past we have won by organising demonstrations, occupations and strikes. We need to do it again. Wirral Against the Cuts is an open campaign and we invite anyone who is interested to come and join our committee. |