What can you say?  Labour seem determined to make matters worse!  We all know how badly local government has been hit by the cuts.  Because in Preston we got so much in the way of government hand-outs in the past, losing them has been hard.  But instead of accepting that and getting on with the job of living within our means, the Labour Group continue to drag their feet.  If they had done what we said two years ago, the city would currently have an extra £1 million in reserves.  Unfortunately, they still haven’t learned the lesson, and of the £3.6m worth of cuts which are required, they have only let us have details of £1.2m so far, as they continue to put off the hard decisions.  However, some of the decisions they have taken will seriously harm the people of Preston.  They have cut back on support for PCSOs, which hopefully won’t affect us here in Ingol, but will probably mean five fewer PCSOs across the city.  They are planning to slash support for our Parks, and end litter picking in the city centre.  But of course there is one area they won’t touch – they refuse to look at our plans to reduce the number of councillors, and to go over to elections every fourth year instead of every year.

And as for the Conservatives, well, we thought they weren’t going to bother producing their own budget– but at the last minute, just before the Councillors sat down for the debate, their proposals appeared.  For all the thought that had gone into them, it felt like they’d written them on the back of a fag packet.