How is austerity affecting you?

Not personally

But it effects me when I read that someone relying on benefits has been wrongly sanctioned and has to wait weeks or months for it to be put right.

you dont need much a social conscience to find that wrong.

I have not experienced austerity cuts. I had a bone marrow transplant 18 months ago so the last 3 years have been very dependant on the nhs. I have not seen any reduction in treatment/care although don't know if it is safeguarded being cancer services.
My fil has dementia he seems to receive access to lots of support and is often in respite for mil to have a break.
We have a family business and employ over 35 staff, I have ensured the minimum we pay is a living wage and although business has reduced we are keeping our head above water.

We have NOT had any austerity yet.

Government spending still exceeds income.

The Coalition Govt spun a good line on austerity but it never actually happened. The austerity is yet to come and it will be forced on us when the next recession hits. The Govt did nothing to prepare the country for that inevitable next recesson.

I'm a student mental health nurse and I'm worried that when I qualify the mental health services won't be there for me to work in .

That's if I even do qualify , if the Tories stop tax credits I'll have to leave my course as there's no way I could live on the nurses bursary alone

Even tory run councils saying 'enough' now:

gu.com/p/49xbb/sbl

I noted a nurse said they hadn't had a pay rise for x years.

If you're in England and under agenda for change our salaries increased on 1st May. I got £300 something over the year. Not much after years of no increase but just mentioning it as you might want to check your pay slip - most of my colleagues hadn't noticed it either.

As you were everyone. ...It's not very important in a thread about austerity but wanted to alert my Nursing colleagues!.

Not much personally. Because I am comfortable (sort of) But I grieve for the poor in our austerity statuus. Some must have gone through hell

I've just read this about workfare.

I think a few weeks of work placement with travel expenses and a reasonable meal allowance is useful in some situations but 6 months and under those conditions is so very, very wrong.

There but for the grace of God...

Cuts have meant there are fewer vacancies in my field so I'm still unemployed a year after retraining. No job = us having to live with extended family because we can't afford our own place.

No money = no holiday for years, much reduced quality of life compared to 10 years ago, we have really noticed the cuts in tax credits, child benefit, higher cost of living

The vat increase hurts

The cost of council services like school meals is much higher, it all adds up.

I visit Brighton regularly. The number of homeless people you see sleeping rough has gone through the roof in just a couple of years.

What makes (non Tory) people so angry,is how the austerity measures are being implemented because the banks and finance sector took trillions of tax pounds to be bailed out of the financial crash they caused.
The austerity measures are having no direct impact in these people who caused it. They are still being rewarded their huge pay plus bonuses. The poorest are paying the highest price. People are actually dying. 60 suicides directly related to the recent Tory cuts.

The press has done a very good job of demonising the poor and those who need social support, and blaming labour for the banking crisis.

There is a war being waged against the poor and vulnerable, by the rich and powerful. The rich and powerful are winning and these austerity measures are yet another fight the poorest have lost.

The town centre here is absolutely full of beggars and homeless people in dire straits. And this is a wealthy country

Wish people had asked these things before making decision to vote Tory without knowing anything about the cuts

Getting respite is very difficult and you need to almost be at crisis point.

We rely on charities to help DD and they have enormous waiting lists and can't help everyone due to funding cuts and increased demand.

It's impossible to get proper therapy for my daughter. She used to have weekly speech therapy. .no longer..she used to have a resident occupational therapist at school who worked on essential life skills like feeding and dressing...no more.

We may well lose carers allowance and child benefit.

We worry what will happen to DD when she leaves school as the schemes which allow people with disabilities to work or attend college are disappearing fast.

We are dreading applying again for her DLA next year already. The list goes on.

Reduced respite for dd2, severely disabled. She is still receiving her NHS continence products though.

I work in the charity sector. Severe funding challenges over the last 5 years. We are partially state funded and this has been pruned back endlessly. We've had pay cuts and redundancies to survive. Large numbers of clients in crisis, with nowhere to go for help.

DH works for the government. Pay and recruitment freezes but huge workload. Everyone very stressed and wanting to leave.

I worked for children's services which was having funding slashed ( from an already poorly rated service) , working with health/schools daily I saw what went on. I've seen a lot of harm done by disability cuts and the massive increase in food banks.
My pay didn't increase in 5 years ( actually got cut)

I'm now a student but likely to lose money if universal credit comes in whilst I'm on my course as it'll say I should be in work not studying.

Posting history suggests genuine, but yes I would be interested in whether any if this has changed your mind.

Should also point out that we're presumably not all 'Labour supporters'. I voted Labour tactically this time but would not describe myself as a Labour supporter.

It would have been polite to have come back and addressed your thread OP as people bothered to reply. I will just assume you've been too busy and aren't yet another lazy arse journalist doing research .

For me the NHS and appointments has gone noticeably downhill. At least half of appointments seem to get cancelled. That's when you get one in the first place.

My dp has a slow degenerative virus that could potentially be eradicated from the entire globes population in 2 generations. The drugs are ready. Trials have been done, the drugs work.
If we lived in Spain, he would be treated. If we lived in France he would be treated. If we lived in the USA (insured) he would be... U get the picture.
The British NHS are unable to get him treated because there is no money for the drugs.
Were one of the wealthiest global economies. Dp could die without these drugs we are still waiting.

I work in social housing and see first hand that austerity is making life difficult and desperate for an awful lot of people. In addition, from an organisational perspective, we spend thousands of pounds that we could be spending on useful stuff like creating and improving homes on just trying to keep our tenants' heads above water, prevent them from starving and from losing the roof over their head, and trying to make sure they're able to pay us enough rent to provide the services we need to. It's senseless and demonstrates that a lot of the cuts simply mean services robbing Peter to pay Paul. The bedroom tax might save money in housing benefit but more is spent on trying to mitigate the negative consequences of tenants being subjected to it.

From a personal perspective, I'm better off now than I've ever been. But I don't do the job I do because that's what's important to me, innit.

I mean if you aren't getting benefits you won't feel the cut will you?

Well, yes and no. Everything will be going swingingly until you're suddenly in need of help. I'm thinking particularly of my parents in their massively-inflatedly- priced house in the Home Counties, surrounded by well off peers and neighbours in shiny cars, in their leafy little town which is pretty much a Poor Free Zone, planning their 3+ holidays a year (one of which is normally a cruise). None of this is going to help them if and when they get seriously ill, or elderly and frail and in need of home care.

So if you're sat in the council having to make cuts - what do you do? Cut something affecting many, or just remove services to expensive people (as that only affects a few).

Quite. Friends have been made redundant, as the the respite care facility for severely disabled children they were working in closed. Bad for them- devastating for those kids and their parents.

ExP is a housing support worker for some of the most vulnerable people in society- there are far fewer jobs in this field than there were 5 years ago. And there is far less help out there for them- it's almost impossible to get any support from mental health services, especially if their conditions are chronic and entrenched. His clients are always getting sanctioned, too- in order to BE his clients they have to have "complex needs"- usually a mix of mental health and addiction issues, which means they just cannot deal with the rigorous sets of hoops the Job Centre makes them jump through (not that many of them have reached the point of being employable yet anyway). Luckily, they have him to fight for them and wade through the bureaucracy, but many don't.

Personally, the only reason I have only been mildly affected so far is that the proposed introduction of Universal Credit has been such an omnishambles and clusterfuck. As a self employed LP on a low income though, the assumption that I am earning the minimum wage - profit- for all the hours that I'm working, and the removal of that from my UC, could be devastating. Probably, I'll survive- just- but am anticipating losing about £200 a month- so paying to work, really. However, anybody in the position I was in 5 years ago, trying to start up a part time microbusiness with a small child in an economically deprived area, will be shafted.