Forthcoming budget - Pain, yes, but banks must be reformed

IT MAY seem unrealistic, unpatriotic even, to challenge spending cuts just as the finishing touches are being put to the grimmest budget anticipated for several decades but, no matter how reduced our circumstances, we will still have priorities.

We will still have obligations to our children and to our future. We will still want to believe that these difficulties will pass and that, in time, our economy will recover from today’s chaos. We will still need our education and health systems to function.

Now that the full, nationwide impact of the cancellation, in last December’s budget, of the summer works scheme for schools has been established through the Freedom of Information Act, we can only wonder at what lies ahead.