Demonstrations against the cuts.

In addition to the march organised by "Save Our Children's Centres" a demonstration was held outside Southport Town Hall on Thursday Evening - targeting the Full Council meeting.

Blyth and I were out in the (cold) morning with the SACC banner handing out leaflets to the councillors as they arrived for the Cabinet Meeting and to passers by. We seemed to be very well recieved and several people came back in the evening for the protest.

The demonstration in the evening was well attended and made local and national news on Granada Reports and Daybreak. There are some pictures, videos and a write up on Southport forums and it made the front page of the local papers.

The Southport Forums page reports:

 "At the Council meeting held at Southport Town Hall on 27th Jan 2011 it was decided that 7 Centre based Youth Clubs would be closed. The clubs affected are Stanley, Meols Cop, Birkdale, Formby, Maghull, Crosby and Aintree. That mens that there is no Youth Service facility until you get to Bootle.

The Labour Party proposed useing "one off funding" to keep them open for a further 12 months. This was voted down by the combined vote of the Conservatives and Lib Dems. The 2 exceptions to this were Cllr Lord Fearn and Cllr Anne Ibbs from Formby. Lord Fearn spoke strongly about how valuable this service was and the huge loss it would be if it was withdrawn.

Cllr Weavers and Cllr Sumner absented themselves from the debate as they declared that they had an interest, in that they sat on the Management Committee of Meols Cop Youth Club. This line of arguement was thrown into doubt however by the presence of the Lib Dem leader Tony Robertson who himself took part in the debate, voted and who himself is a member of a Youth Club Committee.

The Duke of Edinburgh scheme provided by the Youth Service was also axed.

Other services that were cut that affect Southport are as follows

Southport YMCA £50,000 CUT

Parenting 2000 £57,000 CUT

Sefton Women &
Chidrens Aid £49,900 CUT

KGV Gym
Club £7,595 CUT

11th Southport
Scouts £1008 CUT
Kew Woods

Home Start £2000 CUT

Sefton CVS £2,131,207 CUT

Sefton CAB £169,858 CUT"

UKUncut were undeterred from their peaceful anti-tax avoidance protest on Sunday. Despite police outnumbering protestors 4 to 1 and some would be protestors being frightened off the peaceful protest bravely went ahead. The protestors were highlighting Boots' Swiss PO Box scam which allows them to avoid £86m in tax each year. Boots, as a provider of private health care in the UK also stands to benefit from the NHS Bill which sees a shift towards "competitiveness"within the NHS - another way of saying that services are going to be outsourced to private companies. If in any doubt about the effect of doing this with healthcare you just need to look at what happened when hospital cleaning was outsourced - MRSA and C. Difficile. We don't want the cheapest service provider, we want the best quality care.

On Saturday 5th Feb there are national read-ins being planned in threatened libraries across the country. All of Southport's permanently accommodated libraries are threatened with closure - Birkdale, Ainsdale and Churchtown. As far as I am aware there are no read ins planned for Southport but if you would like to organise one in your local library or have organised one and want me to publicise it or would like some help please contact me, also look at http://publiclibrariesnews.blogspot.com