How is austerity affecting you?

[CandyLane]

I'm wondering because I keep hearing Labour supporters complaining about Tory cuts, I know they're happening but I haven't experienced first hand any real difference and I don't think know anybody who has. I know people who work in the NHS who aren't happy about the cuts being made but as far as people struggling to survive financially, I've not seen any evidence.

We're a pretty average family, I work part time and earn about £15k and DH works full time and earns about £30k.
We're actually better off under a Tory govenment, I hardly pay any tax and DH pays less too.
We get CB for our 2 children but other than that we don't get any other benefits but I don't think we would if Labour were in power either.

I've just seen an advertisement for a protest against Austerity in Manchester, which has got me wondering who is being affected and to what degree?

Sorry I don't mean to sound ignorant, just trying to get facts rather than what the papers decide to let us know.

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.

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.

Hope that helps?

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.

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.

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 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?

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.

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

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.

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.

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.

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.

Our A&E is closing, schools are filling up where previously smaller classes, more shops closing in town.
We live in a pretty poor area really so most services are charitable with volunteers.

Personally, we are ok but not sure how much longer the tax credits will continue. Hoping gov won't scrap the award scheme for dds school, it isn't likely.

I lost my job, my company could not afford to keep me on. The company's main customers were schools, but with school budgets being slashed, company profits have dropped significantly.

They've cut their workforce by about 2/3

I am a teacher and I think the cuts are clear. Child and Adolescent Mental Health Services have been cut back horrendously and the issues we are having to deal with in schools are so severe - but the poor students are having to wait far too long for help.

Parents are in more insecure jobs which has an impact on their children.

Funding for schools is cut to the bone, teachers are leaving the profession (40% more last year than the year before, when in a recession normally people who are qualified teachers but may be doing something else, come back into teaching when they lose their other jobs). There is a crisis in staffing in schools.

Local services cut the bone.

I have had to give up to care full time for a severely disabled child
Our care package was cut to zero for three years!
Child benefit has gone even though my h earns just above the threshold
I've had NO that's NONE , incontinence products for almost a year
Medicine (prescribed is harder to get hold of)

Neither of my NT children have been affected by the cuts

I imagine it will only get worse for those most vulnerable in society. It's no surprise to me

I think for most people, the time they will notice the cuts is when something goes wrong - when they need the NHS, when their child needs mental health services, when their DPs have dementia and they need respite services.

This goes back to January, but in the last FT annual survey of economists there was a question on austerity, and out of 87 respondents, only 19 definitely thought the incoming govt. would stick to the planned cuts.

If you're interested, it's really worth scrolling down and reading the individual responses - bar Patrick Minford, (who was the cheerleader for the failed monetarist experiment in the early 1980s) very few of them are strongly in favour of hardcore austerity. Most are anti, neutral, or only weakly pro.

Give up my job for 24/7 care
Incontinence products are for my severely disabled child, something should was made a point of at the 2010 election through mumsnet and riven
Nothing has changed for people like us, it's got a lot, lot worse

But owllady, I understand as I had a disabled son

Owllady: you ought to be ashamed of yourself

I have been reinterviwed for my own job for 3 years running.

I have lost 13 colleagues to redundancy meaning 7 of us are doing the job of 20 people.

I'm paid to work 18.5 hours but actually work around 30 with no recompense.

I haven't had a pay rise in 4 years.

Luckily we have not been affected personally as yet.

I have seen that our local children's centre has been merged with two other children's centre and has started charging for playgroups and also there are less playgroups available than before.

Local bus services have been cut in the evenings and weekend as they were partly funded by the council I believe.

We live between two towns and one town has had their maternity department closed and various other departments, so residents of the town have to travel to the other town instead.

I also forgot to mention that the smaller town is full of charity shops, pound shops and pawn brokers now.

Hestershaw - quite agree. Austerity is about ideological conservatism . Unfortunately everything that is being broken up will be fairly unfixable in 5 years time.