Cllr Reen's post sounds like a load of Tory spin to me. The cuts are not just an Ealing Labour Group's 'imagined' problem, as Cllr Reen would have us believe. ALL the boroughs in the country are affected, they're ALL forced to cut services and most of them are blaming Cllr Reen's Tory-led government for inflicting particularly harsh cuts on local government. Even the Tory ones!It is disappointing the local Tories have gone down the path of trying to politically exploit the sad situation their residents face by denying the cuts are really necessary, and putting all their time and energy into negative exploitation of every residents' campaign to save services. The Tories have chosen to jump on every bandwagon going in order to try to present themselves as the local heroes in all of this! Ruthless indeed!The reality is that just about every council of every political colour is having to cut services - most of them have made much deeper cuts to front-line services than Ealing. Mr Reen's claim that the 'there is no alternative to the cuts' is a 'cuts mantra' that he alleges is being voiced by the local Labour Administration in isolation, is deliberately misleading. There is something distasteful and dishonest about the political message Ealing's Tory group is propagating. The local Tories are inventing an anti-Labour narrative that is not credible and is inconsistent with what their own party members are saying nationally and in other boroughs.All councils and public bodies face real cuts and Mr Reen is foolish to try to pretend otherwise. A saving not taken in the library service will result in another being taken elsewhere.It would be more helpful if the local opposition councillors worked with the present administration to find acceptable solutions to the cuts that will need to be made for several years to come. The allowances they claim are not there for them to milk every cut for what they can get out of it for selfish political gain. They are there to enable councillors to serve the electorate in a constructive way. So these Tory councillors should start trying to help the situation, not pervert it for their own gain.Are they genuinely happy the libraries are not closing? I doubt it. The amunition they thought they had against the Labour Group has been snatched from them and they feel aggrieved. The whole cuts issue is revealing that the Tory Group's interests are most definitely not the same as residents!
John Holt ● 5582d