Since the county council voted for massive cuts, I have been wondering what will happen now.

Cutting £119m is such a big amount, most of us can’t imagine it. Cuts to highly visible services like the youth centres and libraries only represent a very small proportion of this. Most of the cuts will fall on those with special needs, the mentally ill, elderly, infirm, disabled and the young.

Generally none of us will know what is happening to these people. The cuts will be hidden in people’s misery; people with little capacity or chance to complain.

But equally worrying for me, is the effect of the county council putting people out of jobs.

Not only will this cause misery, it will also be very expensive with some of them receiving redundancy pay and then unemployment benefit. The latter will be paid by central government and they will no longer pay taxes – except crippling VAT.

There are lots of own goals here. But worse of all will be the effect on the economy.

As other local authorities are doing the same, the country could be pushed into a double-dip recession. To prevent this, what we need is more jobs not fewer.

Last month I went to hear our MP Nicola Blackwood talking about the Big Society at St Michaels and All Angels Church, in Summertown.

It is lovely to think of people cooperating together more than they have for many years, running a post office or village shop, but there is a limit to what can be provided by this kind of volunteering. To meet the needs of our society as the cuts bite, we shall need something more.

Nicola said that we should expect to have some services provided by the state, such as education and health, but she suggested parts of the NHS would be privatised.

This makes me very worried. We know that predatory companies, some from the States, are waiting to pounce. What is the Government letting us in for?

We have lost out massively over PFI hospitals and education buildings. Please don’t let us go down the dangerous privatisation path again.

By all means improve management of the NHS but that does not require privatisation.

Sarah Lasenby, East Oxford