The scale of the cuts in public spending being prepared by both the Labour government and the Conservative opposition was made clear in a series of interviews and parliamentary exchanges on Wednesday.
Interviewed by the BBC, Conservative Health spokesman Andrew Lansley set out his party’s plans to make spending cuts of 10 percent...
Lansley’s comments were seized upon by the government. After Labour had recorded its worst results since 1910 in elections to the European Parliament on Sunday, Prime Minister Gordon Brown claimed that the choice facing the public was between “a government prepared to invest in the future and a Tory Party which is going to cut.”
Brown’s assertions were quickly disproved, as the Tories pointed out that Labour was already planning significant spending cuts-amounting to at least seven percent in some areas...the governments own figures suggest that Labour also intends a 10 percent real cut in large areas of public spending.
The last months have seen ever more strident calls for a full frontal attack against the public sector, whose supposed “largesse” is now being blamed for the economic crisis.
In reality...public spending under Labour represented a lower share of national income than it did under the Conservatives in the early 1990s...
Even so, the media now routinely contrasts the conditions of public sector workers favourably with those in the private sector. Despite the low pay of many local government employees, their relatively favourable pension rights and working conditions are considered a luxury that the bourgeoisie will no longer tolerate...
http://www.wsws.org/articles/2009/jun2009/cuts-j13.shtml
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