What better time to start this blog than Halloween 2006. It's almost six months since the Conservatives won the May council elections in Hammersmith & Fulham. And true to form they haven't wasted any time in slashing local services.
It's not a good time to be old, disabled or poor in Hammersmith & Fulham - because the Tories are privatising the home help service, cutting 166 jobs mainly held by local women; and they are reducing meals on wheels deliveries so these same vulnerable people only get a visit once in a while with a whole batch of frozen food which they have to heat up themselves.
It's not a good time to have children needing education in the borough. The Tories are planning to close one secondary school at Hurlingham and Chelsea even though it's rapidly improving. They have not said what will replace it to create more choice for local parents. Instead they have managed to unite all the borough's secondary heads against the closure in fear of what might follow. And the Tories have put questionmarks over the future of several local primary schools by announcing a review of primary education. There are even rumours about what they will do to the new children's centres already set up and funded - will the Tories fulfil or scupper these centres, let alone other children's centres planned across the borough?
All because H&F Tories want to emulate their nasty neighbours in Wandsworth and cut council tax to Wandsworth levels. Except there are historical reasons for that which H&F council will never be able to match. Still that won't stop the right-wingers finding scapegoats for their failures - like recent Polish arrivals who do all the Tories' building, cleaning, nannying, decorating, carwashing etc.
This is just a taste of what is to come. Is this what local people really voted for? What makes the Hammersmith & Fulham Tories think they can wreck our borough? Now is the time for local residents to fight back.
Watch this space for more Tory horrors - who needs Halloween?
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