KEITH Mitchell’s comments in Saturday’s Oxford Mail on the decision not to cut Oxfordshire’s library budget seem to be one way to justify the county council’s decision to impose damaging cuts in adult social care, youth and vulnerable children’s services by apportioning the blame to members of the public who, quite rightly, want to keep libraries open, and made their voices heard.
It is indeed easy for politicians to bow down to the most vocal groups, and gain a few votes along the way, rather than addressing the plight of the voiceless – and vote-less.
It would have been more pertinent to many Oxford Mail readers and especially to members of the above groups, to hear how he intends to protect vulnerable people in the county from the untold hardships that the Government is inflicting on them through their ill-conceived wide-scale social experiment.
For years, Oxfordshire County Council has deliberately chosen to cut adult care services’ budget, and has thus earned itself the reputation of being one of the harshest in the country.
No-one is disputing the fact that the current economical crisis this country is going through needs urgent tackling.
At dispute is the systematic targeting of the most vulnerable members of society, who took no part in creating this situation.
Instead, Mr Mitchell and his colleagues in the Government should show some real guts in tackling widespread tax evasion by top companies and stopping the banking industry getting away with insane remuneration and bonuses.
The words “solidarity” and “fairness” have sadly gone out of the current political agenda.
The kind of democracy this is showing is that the ones who shout the loudest get what they want – in fact not that different from jungle law.
JACQUES LAURUOL,Rose Hill, Oxford
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