Councillors’ Corner – Cllr Shane Collins

WELL, saying Happy New Year for 2024 seems a pretty sick joke. 

Locally Somerset Unitary Council is looking to cut £108m by February to the 2024/5 budget to stave off bankruptcy which will bring in government commissioners to cut services. Whatever happens Somerset Council will be a lot smaller. This is the long–term effect of the 2010 Tory / Lib Dem government’s austerity programme hitting home. 

Somerset Council face vastly increased adult and children’s social care. Adult care has gone up from £550 / week to £840 with many care homes owned by private equity, who separate ownership and management, charging huge rents passed onto residents and the council. 

From 2010 to 2016 conservatives froze council tax, making us a very low funded council and lastly the austerity driven government funding to councils has virtually stopped. 

Globally the temperature rose 1.48C in 2023, in response the government allows more fossil fuel exploration in the North Sea! 

If you are not terrified and or angry you probably have your head buried in the corporate media owned who simply want you to carry on consuming.  

Globally we will soon pass 1.5C; by mid 2030s the summer Arctic ice cap will have melted; 2050 the Somerset levels will be under winter water whilst South Asia’s rice areas will be salted – cutting production for 200-300 million; by 2070 around 1.3billion in North Africa, Middle East, India and USA will be unable to grow crops and have to starve or move. Expect regional wars as ‘men with guns’ take control over food and water supplies. This is the terrifying ‘business as usual’ forecast.  

We may have missed the boat, things will be terrible, but we can make them less terrible. We stopped the roads programme, GM foods, a new generation of coal power stations which has led in UK emissions dropping 40%, we stopped fracking, renewables are now the cheapest option and during Covid proved we can look out for each other. But we need to change fast, this is an emergency.  

This year we have a general election in the new Frome and East Somerset constituency, if everyone who voted Green in council elections voted for Martin Dimery, we have a real chance of getting the first Green MP in Somerset. And maybe Somerset will sell Saxonvale to Mayday.