Haringey Lib Dems promised things they couldn't deliver (From Haringey Independent)

Haringey Lib Dems promised things they couldn't deliver

1:01pm Friday 3rd September 2010 in Readers' Letters

As a keen student of the Liberal Democrats for many years, I've been fascinated to watch their transformation from a party that scatters around uncosted promises like so much confetti into the coalition partners of one of the most rightwing Tory governments for decades.

I've been looking back at their manifesto for the Haringey elections earlier this year and trying to work out how a Liberal Democrat council might have got on with the Tory/Liberal Democrat coalition now installed in Westminster.

Like so much from the Liberal Democrats, their local manifesto is thin on pledges where an exact cost can be calculated, but rich in ambitious plans which would in fact cost a lot of money. Six new policing teams here, 200 more litter bins there, improving recycling everywhere, extending access to leisure services for the elderly - who could possibly dissent from the ambition? Parts of it seem to promise the municipal equivalent of a land of milk and honey.

What they've delivered in Government, of course, is more like fire and brimstone. Cuts to funding for new school buildings up and down the country, caps on housing benefit, an end to walk-in services at the new local hospital in Hornsey, restricting winter fuel payments, abandoning plans to crack down on slum landlords, slashing the budget for housing gypsy and traveller families - a real bonfire of the social services, all courtesy of David Cameron and Lynne Featherstone.

It's all a far cry from what they promised us in Haringey just four months ago. Perhaps Councillor Robert Gorrie would care to explain exactly how, given his Government's achievement in slicing £17 million off the council's budget in just 100 days (Haringey Independent, August 18), he would have found the money to implement his promises for Haringey had he won the local election?

Perhaps he'd like to admit that most of the things he cheerfully promised residents were things he either didn't want to deliver, couldn't deliver, or didn't have the faintest clue how to deliver? Or perhaps he'd prefer to admit that the Liberal Democrats really will say anything to get elected?

Tim Waters, Cunningham Road, South Tottenham