But whats happening is that the cuts are not proportionate but affect poorer people extremely disproportionately, removing services on which they depend. In the meantime the Government is proceeding with half baked schemes on idealogical grounds and giving large sums of capital to various unproven groups of people who will not be publicly accountable.

I'm not intentionally mixing threads of discussion but want to say that whilst all these cuts are going on, HMGovernment is busy imposing a radical change to education policy that a number of parents like myself fear. They apparently have the budget to consult upon and prepare a new curriculum, even though one was prepared last year which had the input of educationalists. They are taking educational responsibilities away from local councils and putting it and large sums of money into the hands of unknown groups of people in order to set up free schools. In one such school, £15m is being provided to cater for only 120 pupils! There are already 10 such free schools under discussion in Lewisham, doubtless all competing for scarce land and sites and pushing the prices up and it remains to be seen how many will get approved and on what basis. I doubt if it will involve a concerted strategic approach to meeting educational need.
Our existing schools need investment and modernisation and hence this money £50 million and potentially rising should be spent on that not educational experiments.

We need to consider these things when forming a view of the governments need to make such sweeping cuts in public spending. Money is coming out, but its also going back in somewhere else to support the ConDem ideology and to virtually eradicate the notion of public services. Be very outraged indeed!