Saturday, June 20, 2015

Saturday morning thought: What will Nairn's "fair share" of the Highland Council Cuts apocalypse look like?

Recently we have featured Michael Green's optimism that Nairn could more or less break away under a beefed up Nairn Area Committee set-up and enjoy its fair share of local government funding. Article here and more in this article about Wednesday night's River CC meeting.  Michael's initiative and aspiration will be very popular with many gurnites. 

Fast forward to yesterday however and a Press and Journal Article and any aspirations we might have as a community of getting a better deal from Glenurquhart Road have to be seen in the bleak midsummer crisis light of the cuts express special hurtling down the tracks: "Highland Council facing “massive cuts” as budget deficit trebles".

"The crisis could lead to jobs being axed and education services being put in the firing line after the level of savings needed from 2016-19 rocketed from £13.3million to £46.3million.

The biggest challenge is next year – when more than £21million of savings need to be found."

And here's what one of the new Independent ruling group chairs had to say to the Courier:

 "We are going to have to look at everything," he said. "Things that were sacrosanct will no longer be. Everything is going to have to come into the picture." More here. 

We might get our fair share of cuts and more. Maybe we will get the chance to participate in a renewed local democracy but will it be amidst the smouldering ruins of what we once took for granted - and you have to remember that a lot has already left Nairn in the direction of Inverness over the past 20-30 years.

7 comments:

Cuts said...

The SNP make much recently about tackling austerity, what are they going to do to protect us from these proposed cuts? Many services will have to go and each and every one of us is going to be poorer for it

gg said...

Whatever happens we have to face these cuts with a smile -remember if the debt is not paid of quickly it will be down to our children to face it--lets all do what we can to get this paid off-believe it or not the Tories are the best thing for Britain.

Anonymous said...

Well said GG

Rule Brittania said...

Hear, hear GG

The Tories have managed to increase our debt beyond our wildest dreams in the last 5+ years to the extent that it's probably our grandchildren who will inherit the debts from this generation.

Let's hope they continue with the massive cuts in spending so the poor can really pull their weight.

We really must keep paying bankers lots of money or they'll leave the country, and we need to ensure that the rich become much richer or they'll be poor.

The divide in our society will hopefully increase over the next few years of Tory rule.

It's only a matter of time before the elite manages to vote out the SNP and Scotland sees sense and votes for the Conservatives as it did back in the 1950's

As we can all see we're Better Together, thank God we didn't vote for independence last year as imagine the state Scotland would be in with a barrel of oil worth about as much as a can of Irn Bru

Come on Dave, put the boot in to the scroungers and immigrants, let's make Britain great again and support the hard working man

And as gg said, we support all your cuts with a smile

Anonymous said...

fer all that's holy,,,,,,TORIES BEST THING FOR BRITAIN?????? they are all millionaires,and still have their claws out looking for more,,TAX THEM TO THE HILT,,
NAROOK.

Anonymous said...

I've never agreed with Narook before but just have

Indie cats said...

The Courier editorial said back in 2008:

"THIRTEEN months ago we predicted that the task of persuading Independent members of Highland Council to toe a party line would be like herding cats."

http://www.inverness-courier.co.uk/Opinion/Leader/Battle-for-power-6442.htm

Has anything changed?