AUSTERITY seems to be the main talking point at the moment with the question being; is it working?

The answer is yes and no.

As we were reminded by an old soldier on Question Time recently we had austerity in 1945 and managed to produce the NHS and the welfare state.

Today austerity works for foreign governments making hundreds of millions of pounds a year running our public services but not if you are a taxpayer covering any losses or service users paying for something you once owned.

It works for Tory ministers/ donors with housing connections as the Government is intent on making housing affordable only to the rich who will buy up the houses and market them at extortionate rents, knowing the Conservatives have just voted against a rule requiring landlords to make homes fit for habitation.

It won’t work if you have to leave your family home because someone has bought it and wants you out because you cannot afford the triple rent rise.

Nor did it work for any of the 103,000 English children who were homeless last Christmas.

It works if you are a private contractor, with Tory links, bidding for an NHS contract because you will be awarded it even after being outbid by the NHS by millions of pounds.

It won’t work, despite there being a £30 billion surplus of NI contributions, if you are a patient on a long waiting list or a student nurse who has had their bursary scrapped.

Nor will it work for the thousands of blind and disabled pensioners who have just had their carers axed, or those who have just had their disability benefit cut by £30 per week.

Not surprisingly it works very well for the MPs who voted for that cut as they claim hundreds of thousands of pounds a year on expenses.

Sadly it never worked for more than 10,000 disabled people who in one year (back in 2011) died just a few weeks after their benefits had been stopped.

Figures we are lucky to see as the Department for Work and Pensions has now decided to stop publishing them.

I wonder why?

GRAHAM BRINKSMAN Orford