Saturday afternoon in Market Street, working for half an hour or so on the RtW stall with Andy and Tom. It’s quite hard work to engage with people - perhaps something to do with football - but we do get a response. Sometimes it’s about the big picture as with the woman doing market research. She is angry; in particular as the little guys are being asked to pay as the fat cats get fatter. Sometimes it is people worried about what is going to happen to the services they are delivering. A volunteer in a hospital trust speaking at length about excessive dependence on volunteers. And then going on to talk about PFI and the financial burden it imposes. And there is a civil servant who when I said 'Ah! Your union is backing protests on the 22nd’ replied 'Well, no, I’m in the FDA (First Division Association, organising the top 18,000 civil servants) but I will be with you in spirit’
The Emergency Budget won't be all the cuts; there'll be more in the comprehensive spending review in the autumn. But they will be savage (as promised by Clegg) so the friendly image being cultivated by the government will be damaged. Cameron's offer of more dosh to soldiers on active service and limiting of the war aims to 'national security' (**) may help him at home for the moment but will the image last beyond Tuesday 22 June?
** Cameron, of course, does nothing to clarify, how this is going to be achieved, nothing about how NATO can avoid defeat in Afghanistan.
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