- Warning: Contains mention of suicide.
Britain is so broke that it can’t afford lollipop people any more. Councils are having to turn off the fountains in Nottingham and dim the street lights in Birmingham. In some areas, public toilets are a thing of the past. Libraries might soon follow them.
In Rotherham, Southampton and Blackpool, they’ve reduced funding for addiction support services. In Bradford, the town hall says the cuts it has to make are so deep that it will need to borrow money just so it has the capacity to implement them.
But the drastic decisions that local authorities are making now are just the tip of the iceberg. Austerity has been biting since 2010, when George Osborne slashed the amount of money councils could receive from central government in one of his first acts as chancellor.
