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From The Socialist newspaper, 23 September 2009
Threat to Coventry homeless
COVENTRY SOCIALIST Party councillor Dave Nellist has warned that council budget cuts for Coventry's leading homelessness charity will see more people sleeping rough in that city from next month.
After news that the homelessness charity, Coventry Cyrenians, was facing a £750,000 cut in its £2.2 million budget from the end of September, Dave told a meeting of councillors that a much-reduced homelessness service at the Cyrenians would be unable to cope. It would have to turn away referrals from Walsgrave Hospital, Coventry council's own children's services, the police and city wardens.
The Tory Cabinet member for Housing Services agreed to Dave's request for an urgent meeting of senior councillors to see whether the situation can be reversed or, if not, how the city would cope with more people sleeping rough.
Dave Nellist said: "Home-lessness in Coventry is less visible than in many other cities because of excellent work by the Cyrenians. But unemployment locally has doubled in the last 12 months, and could double again; and as those numbers rise so will family break-ups, evictions, and homelessness.
"We live in a country that can afford hundreds of billions of pounds to protect bankers and their bonuses, but the most vulnerable in our society, without shelter or a home, face service cuts in the help they desperately need."
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The coronavirus crisis has laid bare the class character of society in numerous ways. It is making clear to many that it is the working class that keeps society running, not the CEOs of major corporations.
The results of austerity have been graphically demonstrated as public services strain to cope with the crisis.
The government has now ripped up its 'austerity' mantra and turned to policies that not long ago were denounced as socialist. But after the corona crisis, it will try to make the working class pay for it, by trying to claw back what has been given.
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In The Socialist 23 September 2009:
Prepare political challenge to cuts agenda
Education
Higher education - cuts cuts cuts!
Universities in crisis - Join Socialist Students
Defend education - stop the £2 billion cuts in spending
TUC
TUC congress: Anger on the fringes, inaction at the top
War and occupation
Afghanistan: An unwinnable war
Postal workers strike
Postal workers strike as national ballot continues
Vestas
Vestas workers determined to continue fight for jobs
Youth fight for jobs
Youth unemployment hits record level
Future Jobs Fund - massaging the figures
Socialist Party news and analysis
Campaign for a Salford workers' MP
International socialist news
Socialist Party MEP denounces "campaign of fear" on Lisbon Treaty
Workers' fightback grows in Italy
Socialist Party workplace news
Engineering construction: Stewards' forum recommends bosses' offer Workers should reject!
Portsmouth shipbuilders vote for strike
Bosses ask JCB workers for sacrifice
Battle over pensions means strike threat at Corus
Liverpool bin workers score victory
Socialist Party reviews
Listening to Grasshoppers by Arundhati Roy
The Dirty Thirty - Heroes of the Miners' Strike
The Anti-Flag album 'The People or the Gun'
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