Cut right to the bone

DEATH RAY TESTER IS REAL BLO Devastation by Tories goes to heart of nation

ONE of the few things I am thankful to the BBC for is that although trapped in London I can still get Radio Leeds.

Sunday morning, iplayer, 9am to 12pm, Tim and Graham on gardening, 180 minutes of garden-based banter.*

The last show was a beauty. A lot of talk on composting.

Perfect for the gardening enthusiast or terminally hung over.

But in between the compost chat they had a guest on from the Friends of Roundhay Park. So cool.

If you’re from East Leeds, as I am, you grew up with Roundhay Park.

A special place. Football in the summer, sledging in the winter. Bonfire night is massive.

Michael Jackson had a concert at Roundhay. So did Madonna, and Bruce Springsteen. There are tropical gardens with a butterfly house.

Anyways. This Friend of Roundhay Park was talking about the volunteer work they do picking up litter – supplementing the great job the parks department do.

All good. But more and more we’re seeing volunteers stepping in to cover council cuts. Not just in Leeds but across the country.

This week, the sheer scale of what’s being done to our councils was revealed, as new Tory funding plans were laid out.

According to the Local Government Associations local authorities will have a funding gap of more than £3billion this year and £8billion by 2025.

What does this mean, in practical terms? Take parks first. One in three parks no longer has any staff on site, RUSSIA moves more and more into the realms of S.P.E.C.T.R.E.

Mysterious deaths, teams of hitmen, substances in perfume bottles – it’s straight out of the Blofeld playbook.

But this week’s news – that some sort of brain-scrambling weapon is being deployed on park funding has been reduced by at least £15million.

And 95 per cent of councils will make more cuts to parks.

Not bothered about parks?

What about buses? Nearly half of all bus routes in England receive some sort of council funding.

So when the money is cut, so are bus routes. Council tax? More than half a

Incidentally, I missed the end of Tim and Graham’s gardening show and did not get the answer to the ten o’clock teaser.

“Fan, grid, french, herringbone and mole are all types of what?” If anyone has the answer that would be greatly appreciated. Been killing me all week.

A STATUE of Margaret Thatcher is being put up in her home town of Grantham – on a 10ft plinth to try to foil vandals. dals.

Ten feet? The Angel of the North, her polar opposite, e, is 66ft and someone put a Santa hat on it at Christmas.

But anyway. There you go. £300,000 for the statue, right. Worth every penny. This column is in no way endorsing g any act of vandalism but there are a number of excellent ladder adder hire places in Grantham. One very near the station. Russian ships – was truly bizarre. The Filin, Russian for Eagle Owl, is a “dazzler” weapon.

It uses radiation to bring on hallucinations, blindness, vomiting and delirium.

We know it works as it’s been tested already. At least 20 per cent of volunteers said they saw a million households no longer receive council tax support because councils can’t protect discounts. The number of school crossing patrollers – lollipop men and ladies – has fallen by almost a quarter in five years.

The number of people directly employed by local government has fallen by 629,000 over the last 20 years.

We’ve all seen our libraries close, “massive ball of light” and half reported dizziness and nausea.

See the key word in that sentence? “Volunteers”.

Because we all know times are hard. But if you’re volunteering to have the Russians fire a death-ray at you, then things are really, really not going well. plus swimming pools, community centres, museums and galleries.

As MP Anna Soubry put it: “Councils will now have to cut right through the muscle and into the bone.” Spot on.

One council official told me: “Sometimes we come up with a little slogan to sum up what our budget is about. Nothing formal. Just something between us. In the last couple of years it’s been ‘Making difficult decisions’ or ‘How to do more with less.’

What’s this year’s?

“How the hell are we going to keep the lights on..?” ONE MP who decided to go vegan in January, or Veganuary as they call it, tells me he did it for ethical, not health, reasons. But aren’t some farming methods fair enough? Animals organically reared and kept in decent conditions and all that? “True,” he said, then thought for a second. “But in the end,

they all get f****** killed.” Fair point.