West Dunbartonshire continues to be one of the poorest areas in Britain

• Suffering from unemployment, low income, low life expectancy and the violence of poverty…which is reflected in increasing levels of domestic violence.
• Yet you [the Labour administration] continue to implement cuts to ordinary people’s lives year after year after year.
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• Poverty continues to blight the educational opportunities of our school children.
• In the worst of weather conditions, many are forced to come to school in thepoorest of clothing…many having nothing to eat before they left the house.
• This poverty is reflected in increasing violence in schools…where staff and pupils are kicked, punched, bitten, spat upon and sometimes sexually assaulted.
• Cutting school management time…will multiply the problems faced by these children.
• Yet you continue to implement cuts to ordinary people’s lives year after year after year.
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• For those dependent on social work services what is offered is increasingly not fit to meet their needs. 
• Children at risk have had to survive without the level of social work service they require.
• Yet you continue to implement cuts to ordinary people’s lives.
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• You recognise all this.
• West Dunbartonshire: Local Child Poverty Action Annual Report 2022-2023.
• “People in West Dunbartonshire are facing an economic crisis on a scale that has not been experienced for decades.
• Many, who have been able to get by until now, will be pushed into poverty, and those who are already struggling will be pushed into desperation.
• With children in less well off families being the most vulnerable of all.
• 27.6% of children in West Dunbartonshire live in poverty.
• Yet you continue to implement cuts to ordinary people’s lives.”
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• As the cap is cut on energy prices, plunging families into fuel poverty, the cap is cut on bankers bonuses…shifting the balance of wealth again to the rich and super rich…
• Yet you continue to implement cuts to ordinary people’s lives.
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• The anger around poverty pay and inequality has seen strikes breaking out across the private and public sector. This is a major indicator that working-class people have had enough.
• The willingness to take action is clearly backed up by widespread public support for the strikes. It is an indication of what is to come.
• This Tory government is dead in the water and our challenge to save our services is the building of a campaign against the continued devastation of our services by the next “Tory Government” of Kier Starmer.
• Councils and the Scottish Government should set no-cuts budgets using all the financial levers already available to them
• This has to be done alongside a campaign with the unions to fight for appropriate funding for services from the Scottish and Westminster Governments.
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• By balancing the books you attack the people of WD
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• As it stands,
• You are the administrators of Tory policy.
• You are the vehicle for Tory devastation in our communities.
• We oppose all of the cuts you have in mind and we will organise our Trade Union members against them and in support of a “Needs” budget.
• Your senior managers, who put this feast of possible cuts before you are highly paid and will be little affected by them.
• How about giving the people of West Dunbartonshire, the people who elected you, the choice between a balanced budget and a budget that meets the needs of this community
• And in the process help them fight for the return of all of the money stolen from us by the political representatives of the rich and privileged.
• This is a call to arms and you have to join us.
• If not you will continue to make cuts to the fabric of this community year after year after year.

Jim Halfpenny was one of three local citizens who addressed the Council at this Open Forum session. Unfortunately Cllr Michelle McGinty, left, deputy leader of the Council and convener of the Social Work Committee, discourteously walked out of the meeting before he was finished speaking, which says not a lot about the council’s alleged commitment to listening to the public.