How is austerity affecting you?

The library is open shorter hours, and I reckon they are keeping damaged books for longer & getting new books in less often.

There are slightly fewer TAs at the primary.

I work with clinical staff in NHS & they are somewhat demoralised.

I can afford rail fare rises, can't pretend I haven't noticed the price rises.

Worries about DS1, career sector he wants has had big cuts.

So not very much for us, no.

As a family we are better off with the Tories. We earn double the OP but we just get by in the SE.

But whenever I heard of the unfair sanctions to the disabled, the cut in social care etc, it makes me go very angry. You don't need to be poor to have compassion for the less fortunate.

We surely have money as a country if we ca afford giving 2.8% bonds away to pensioners with NS&I. Or the raising of inheritance tax. Or the abolishment of the top income tax bracket.

We're not eligible for CB under the Tories... But as DH earns 60k I don't mind as we don't need it in the true sense of the word.

OP, I was discussing this exact question with the other day, but from the reverse POV.

When the Tories got back in in 1992, I was disappointed from a wider political perspective, but actually, it didn't really affect me very much personally. Now, despite the fact that we run our own business and it is doing well in terms of customers, it feels like the cuts are definitely impacting on us as a family.

The main difference, I think, is that we used to live in a city. If you're in a city, there's always provision because of the critical mass of population, if you can pay for it. So bus/train fares may go up, funding for school trips may be cut, arts subsidies will go. But if you've got a well paid job you can pay the high fares, go to a private hospital, send your DC to Stagecoach / private music lessons, etc etc.

Now we live in a very rural area. Everything is marginal. You can't pay your way out of things, no matter how prosperous you are, because the services just won't be there. DD goes to the one state school that everyone else goes to, and so she is suffering from the cuts to teaching and support staff.

Also, people in my town are losing their public sector jobs - that means they don't have money to spend in the shops, which means the shops won't be there for me to use either. The Royal Mail, which I depend on for my business, is also being cut - we've just heard that collection services are going to be reduced, I suspect meaning we won't get a collection every day.

So even from a personal, selfish perspective, there is a big disadvantage to me from austerity.

I don't agree with the reduction of respite care funding. I do know one person this has affected.

I don't feel any effects of austerity. Library hours were reduced a year or two ago. But that's about the only thing I can think of. I didn't think much of the Labour years. I waited a long time for an operation.

Austerity is not an economic policy in my opinion - it's a convenient mask for a small state ideology. Once the "books are balanced", assuming the Tories are still in power, do people really think these slashed public services will be restored?

My child benefit was frozen for three years.
My tax credits were reduced.

The cut that has affected me the most:
Services that my child who has severe and complex disabilities uses have been vastly reduced. My child cannot access mainstream services even with 1:1 support and the few specialist services that he can access have had their funding cut very deeply. This has left my child with reduced access to leisure in the school holidays and means that he spends days with nothing to do and nowhere to go as he cannot use mainstream facilities even if I go along to support him (he is a teenager). It also means that our respite hours have been cut and if he goes overnight for respite he has to be collected by 9am the next morning, meaning I dont really get much respite at all (he only goes to respite at 5pm the evening before).

The monetary loss is less significant than the loss of respite and appropriate services but both cuts have impacted on us as a family.

Austerity has barely touched our lives as we have a good income.

We have friends who work in education and the health service though, and they have gone from being financially secure to teetering on the edge. They are also all very overworked and stressed, with obvious repercussions for their health.

My extended family live in Wales and the NHS there seems to be in absolute chaos. Several people I know have been waiting a horribly long time for operations and treatment.

Personally I voted for the whole of society, not just myself. Austerity is a discredited economic policy anyway, both stupid and cruel.

And children are becoming 'latch key kids' again because both parents are out at work all hours. The phrase 'latch key kid' died out 40 years ago but I work in a large secondary school and have heard it said twice recently about two different children.

Hope that helps?

I see families of 4 or more living in two up two down houses because they can't afford anywhere bigger. Back to how it was 80 years ago. I know this because my 80 year old neighbour was born in his house and he says times remind him of when he was small and sleeping top to toe with his brothers. People are also opening up fireplaces again to burn wood (we, and the neighbours go down to the local garden centre to get pallets to chop up and burn for example) because they can't afford the central heating.

You are fortunate. You earn a very good wage on part time hours plus your DH 's salary. You aren't a single parent and I can assume you don't have anyone ill or disabled in your family, I'm also assuming you don't work in public services in the North West so see the cuts first hand or for the NHS up here. So yes, you are right, maybe you won't be particularly affected no.

The organisation I worked for delivering govt contracts at unsustainable rates became unviable when the central govt grant was cut in the last govt. It folded last year, and I was made redundant. I am now doing similar work self employed but getting paid far less and with lots of expenses which my workplace would have paid for.
I would be better off claiming jobseekers.

As a self employed couple with no children and just on the housing ladder we do ok on a personal level under the Tories. That is, we don't have childcare to find, school places to worry about, illnesses to treat (touch wood), and so on.

However our Council's income and spending has been absolutely decimated. It has had to find £94 million of savings over the next five years. I can see it in the shabbiness of the streets, the overgrown litter strewn verges, the closed down public toilets and amenities like tourist information centres (we have a tourism economy in Cornwall of course), and I hear anecdotes about social services, parents waiting for years and years to get appointments for their children who may have special needs, and declining social care for the elderly. Bus services have been cut, both the ones primarily used by tourists, and the ones which were rural lifelines. They are trying to claw back money from every possible angle and it looks like a very worrying time for businesses which rely on tourists like ours, as the council increase their car parking charges and start charging businesses new taxes and "concessions" for the privilege of operating their companies, providing employment for people and bringing money to the area. Existing charges for council provided amenities have shot up because they are unable to increase council tax by more than 2% without a referendum.

The whole thing is completely arse about tit.

My dad who has dementia in Wales, has faced increasingly awful service from the NHS.

During a period of joblessness I was told to go for a commission only job or face sanctions, I fully believe if I had refused and we were sanctioned we would have been better off (hindsight is a wonderful thing) and now that dh has a stable job (apprenticeship, literally the only one to reply to application out of 500+ positions applied to) we rely heavily on benefits even though we 'bring home' significantly less than we did while unemployed. Personally I know there are people who are a lot worse off and have relied on food banks etc, we are lucky enough to be very good at living on a tight budget and seem to be doing ok

I'm a public sector - Education.

Not had a pay rise since the last election, not likely to get one any time soon either. Govt spending is being cut in my sector (FE) all the time, and I think we're at breaking point.

Every year, I'm asked to do more for the same amount of money. Bigger classes, teach more hours per week... This has been going on for the past five years, and is set to continue. However, I'm not complaining on my behalf - it's the students I feel sorry for. If my classes are now 1/3 bigger, I can't afford to mark essays as frequently - so the students get less input from me and so on... I no longer feel that my students get the best from me, because I'm spread too thinly. I can't do everything I ought, there's just not enough hours in the day.

Everyone I know is trying to get out, and is looking for other jobs. Teachers are leaving in droves, and who can blame them...?

I do appreciate that losing cb due to earning more isn't exactly the hardship to end all hardships but it does grate that other families earn more than us and still get cb due to the way it was implemented.

Still think losing carers allowance is crappy.

I had to pay thousands to get my children diagnosed and supply a treatment plan for the NHS as there is poor Nhs facilities for our conditions.

I had to wait about a year between appointments for a specialist unit tests and treatment plan. People complained and I gather it's now a three month wait should I need to return.

I have struggled getting SEN medical recommendations
for my dc in education.

I was unable to walk and could get no support to parent my dc get them to school nhs medical appointments hundreds of miles away for a 9 am start. I got no advocacy and no help to claim dla.

I have had only 2, 1% pay rises in 7 years.

I work in education and we've had around £3million cut from our funding each year, resulting in a lot of redundancies. When people leave, they don't get replaced. I am doing the equivalent of a full time job in three days.

And whilst I believe that there was probably a lot of padding out pre-recession, it's gone to the other extreme now, people doing huge amounts of work with not even inflationary pay rises. I see more stress related sickness now.

Our council run nursery is about to close, I have no idea what to do with my two LO we can't afford another £20 every day for a private nursery as neither mine nor my DH's wage has risen since 2007 :-(

childcare tax credits have gone down by far more than I gained in lower taxes.

hell will break loose when csa expect XP to pay more. at best I'll lose £20 a month, at worst the police and women's aid will be involved again and the children, who don't know their dad, will suffer.

had to give up OU due to the fee's.

working single parent. y'know, one of the people who caused this mess .

I don't get CB anymore - which seems fair enough (DH and I earn ~£120k between us).

I don't think austerity has really touched my life much - possibly because the DC are privately educated and we're lucky enough to be in good health.

I do appreciate that I am incredibly fortunate.

Libraries closed, museums under pressure, funding for early years and schools being crushed, hospitals seriously under funded.

We were starting out with dc when they came to power. So for us it's just how it is, I've no idea if it could be better.

We get by although I've just reigned in our grocery spend as fuel costs have gone up, winter is hard as dh is seasonal work but it's how it is and we will just have to wait to see how the next 5 years unfold.