THE STREET THAT CUT EVERYTHING

http://www.bbc.co.uk/i/b011crrw/

I watched the above programme on the BBC the other night. Quite good as reality tv goes. An experiment in what happens when a whole street has it's council run services cut and has to do it themselves. 
If you can ignore the fact that it did tend to focus on the conflict between various members of the community, it was quite a thought provoking programme.
At first they tried to save as much money as they could by a lot of DIY rubbish collection and street cleaning. It was when the bombshells of paying towards the services of the wider community when things began to go wrong. Like most of us all they were thinking of was that the money they were receiving paid for the services of their own street. It wasn't until they were stopped money to pay for parks, city centre street cleaning, that they began to understand the wider picture. 
The biggest cause of contention though was that one of the people in the street was in receipt of council grants for rent and education and another was receiving help with her father who needed care. As her father didn't live in the street some didn't see why they had to pay.
I think most of us only think of the services we receive directly from our councils. Usually that the bins get emptied. The programme did highlight the fact that we all contribute to all council services whether we use them or not.
With all the cuts that are bound to happen over the next few years many of those services will either go or be drastically reduced. We may find that we have to do some of those things the council now take care of, particularly the care of the elderly and infirm. 
That all this has been caused by the banks making investments akin to gambling on a 100-1 shot at Aintree makes me angry. The self same bankers who are still voting themselves huge bonuses and pay rises while the rest of us struggle to make ends meet.