Have you personally suffered from George Osborne’s spending cuts? Your answer depends largely on where you live. I’ve witnessed both over the past few days. This Christmas, I’m enjoying my first prolonged stay away from London in some time and the impact of austerity in the North East has really struck me.
First to note is spending cuts in local government. In this part of the world, the public sector is a vast beast. The Guardian reported in 2010 34 per cent of the total employment in Newcastle upon Tyne is in the public sector, one of the top 15 councils in the country. The authorities of Sunderland, Northumberland, North Tyneside and Darlington all have above-national average employment in the public sector. Therefore the news in the Autumn Statement of another £445 million of spending cuts to local government in 2014-15 is another unwelcome development.
One friend who works in a council underlined to me how hard the Tories are going to have to work to win over public sector workers in time for 2015.
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