Have you received your new Council Tax Bill?
This time of year is always a shock to the system when you realise how much extra you're going to have to pay for council services that you know are being drastically cut all the time.
Perhaps in an attempt to convince us that they are listening, Labour councillors in Swansea held off on a small number of cuts to services, amounting to maybe 1 or 2% of the cuts they considered - partially restoring funding to West Glamorgan Youth Theatre, postponing the introduction of charging for residents' parking, etc.
But even here it was simply a case of altering the way Swansea residents will pay for Con-Dem austerity - to pay for these concessions the Council has increased Council Tax by 4.8% instead of 3%. Council Tax has how gone up by nearly 10% in two years at a time when workers' wages, including those of the Council's own workforce, are being held down.
Whether its through cuts to services or through increased housing costs (council rents have also gone up as well as council tax), Labour, like all other parties represented in Westminster, the Senedd and Swansea's council chamber, is committed to austerity. They might argue about the fine details - whether to put more emphasis on slashing public sector jobs and services or on increasing charges for the use of those services. But the bottom line is they all accept that working class people should continue to pay for a crisis that was not of our making.
That's why TUSC is needed. We need representatives who clearly say "no more" to cuts and will stand up for working class people. Join us in making TUSC a force in the general election in May, the Assembly election next year and the council elections the year after.
This time of year is always a shock to the system when you realise how much extra you're going to have to pay for council services that you know are being drastically cut all the time.
Perhaps in an attempt to convince us that they are listening, Labour councillors in Swansea held off on a small number of cuts to services, amounting to maybe 1 or 2% of the cuts they considered - partially restoring funding to West Glamorgan Youth Theatre, postponing the introduction of charging for residents' parking, etc.
But even here it was simply a case of altering the way Swansea residents will pay for Con-Dem austerity - to pay for these concessions the Council has increased Council Tax by 4.8% instead of 3%. Council Tax has how gone up by nearly 10% in two years at a time when workers' wages, including those of the Council's own workforce, are being held down.
Whether its through cuts to services or through increased housing costs (council rents have also gone up as well as council tax), Labour, like all other parties represented in Westminster, the Senedd and Swansea's council chamber, is committed to austerity. They might argue about the fine details - whether to put more emphasis on slashing public sector jobs and services or on increasing charges for the use of those services. But the bottom line is they all accept that working class people should continue to pay for a crisis that was not of our making.
That's why TUSC is needed. We need representatives who clearly say "no more" to cuts and will stand up for working class people. Join us in making TUSC a force in the general election in May, the Assembly election next year and the council elections the year after.
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