UK to cut public spending 25%

[Hannah Bell]

Announcements of the “reform” of university funding and public sector pensions and abolition of government quangos have been made in the run-up to the Conservative/Liberal Democrat government’s October 20 Comprehensive Spending Review.

The government intends to set out spending cuts of 25 percent and more across most departments. The announcements it has made are attempts to prepare the ground beforehand and take the sting out of the full package when it becomes known Wednesday.

Last Thursday, what was described as the “largest shake-up” of the civil service in a generation was announced. Some 192 quangos —quasi-non-governmental organisations financed by the state and linked to the civil service —are to be scrapped, and 118 others merged. Tens of thousands of job losses are expected...

Earlier in the week, the commission into university funding chaired by Lord Browne reported. The report will not only mean students having to pay significantly increased tuition fees and higher interest rates on any loans they borrow, but the scrapping of courses considered economically unviable and the bankrupting of entire institutions.

The head of Universities UK, Professor Steve Smith, wrote an email to vice-chancellors saying that the money from increased fees will not provide extra money for universities, but enable (cuts)... Smith’s email states, “Browne explicitly says that Hefce (England’s university funding body) will have teaching funding of £700 million; the current sum is £3.9 billion”.

As Hutton acknowledged, public sector pensions have (already) been reduced by 25 percent...Hutton’s interim report makes clear pensions are to be reduced still further....Hutton’s interim report was delivered as millions took to the streets in France against a similar assault on pension provision by President Nicholas Sarkozy. Across Europe, governments are utilising the recession to radically restructure wages and social provision at workers’ expense...

http://www.wsws.org/articles/2010/oct2010/cuts-o19.shtml

[n2doc]

1. CONservatism is a virus, spread globally n/t

[leveymg]

2. First, they'll start another Great Depression, then they'll get global class warfare

The net result will be destruction of the existing system. What form of conservatism is that? The kind we saw in the 1930s - Fascism.

It's going to get truly ugly before this is over.

[TBF]

5. That is the one thing that gives me hope out of all of this -

that workers across borders will band together for global socialism. It is the only way to save the plant. Left unchecked we can see how Capitalism (corporate stewardship) operates and destroys everything in it's path.

[JCMach1]

3. This is going to be a horrific blow to the economy...

[xchrom]

4. the gospel of neo-liberalism is going to choke western societies to death. nt