Public squalor, private profit

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waiting for an operation for more than two years?

to be built?

If you want to find out the answer to these and similar questions, the latest report by Counter Information Services, Cutting the Welfare State* — produced in conjunction with the National Community Development Project - is gripping reading. New Phrase In recent months a new phrase has come into fashion - the social wage. According to Chancellor Dennis Healey, it is worth £20 a week to every man, woman and child in the country. It is the value of this social wage, we are told by right wing Labour ministers, that is threatened if the £6 limit is broken. If normal wages go up, the social wage will be cut. This despite the fact that as early as the second quarter of this year real earnings had already fallen by 3 per cent as agamst prices.

But just what is this 'social wage?? WHY is Merseyside Council going to put 100 newly qualified nurses on the dole when 363 Merseyside patients have been WHY is Brent Council in London paying £345 a day to keep a site empty on which a new comprehensive school was going WHY are as many as 150 old people's home, children's homes and hostels for the mentally handicapped to be closed - or, if newly built, to remain unopened - for the next few years?

Mick Gosling It is the "social' aspect of the social wage which is being slashed at the present time. The Wilson Government won't welch on the moneylenders; private industry Bettish physicians prescribe Tryptizor Blaming public problems on personal "failings' — a lucrative business for the arue companies will continue to get its subsidies as the regeneration of British industry' takes place; and the boys in blue al public authority spending of 104 DIllon. aLone or cemenous Genie ing begin to sink in. For of the £9 billion deficit this year, the Government expected that no less than 15 billion would go to paying merest alone on previous and pres ent borrowings.' cuts of £3 billion by 1978-79, debt interest will then be running at a rate of £ll billion or more meaning that the Government will be borrowing around £20 billion a year. CIS calculate that even to keep borrowing steady at £12 billion a year will mean cutting welfare spending by £5½ billion in real terms by 1977-78.

It's when vou look that the implications of this borrowEven with the proposed Healey WE