The budget has been put forward by Birmingham City Council that will see the complete collapse of our City's services and communities. After 14 years of austerity, where the bulk of austerity cuts have only been implemented over the last 5-7 years, our great City and its people cannot take these cuts, nor a 20% increase in council tax over the next 2 years. 

With services for children with Special Educational Needs, Older People's Services, Learning Disabilities Services, Youth Services, and Libraries and Parks Services already cut to the marrow (the bone was reached long ago), further cuts will see children, young people, and vulnerable adults cut off from vital services and their communities, and will see the remaining refuges of our libraries and parks undermined and extinguished. 

Our young people, who are already stabbing each other to death in the streets, or are afraid of being stabbed to death in the streets, will fall further into despair and trouble, whilst youth services and intervention will all but vanish. It is Birmingham's people and communities that will suffer.

I am calling for Birmingham City Council to lead its citizens in this time of extreme difficulty, and not to simply put their head in their hands, appearing on TV saying how 'difficult and challenging' it will be. It is not good enough to remove services and make no efforts to support and facilitate communities to create ways to maintain services that are vital to them.

Whether that's exploring local community groups to set up as constituted community groups, CIC's, or charities that can apply for grants to run local services, or create networks of people to facilitate the travel of vulnerable groups using council access to DBS checking services to ensure people are safe to do so. The council should lend whatever knowledge and resources it may still have, to facilitate communities to do the above. 

This effort must be made by all councillors and MPs and incorporated immediately into local ward plans. We want to see people of all political parties working together to deliver for our people, and not working against each other for individual gain or political purposes. We want to see MP's reaching out and engaging all councillors in their Constituency and offering support regardless of politics. We want to see the Mayor of West Midlands and the PCC working hard together and for the people of Birminghan, and to act on problems such as teen stabbings immediately! For too long our children have been dying on the streets and it cannot be allowed to get worse! Housing is a state with people living in awful conditions, and it cannot be allowed to get worse!  It is time they pull together and show us they are worth what they are paid and where their interests lie. Are they self-serving, or serving the people of Birmingham? 

No more blaming this mess on one party or another. It is clear to everyone that Birmingham's issues are a mixture of a poorly managed council under Labour, and 14 years of austerity imposed from a Conservative (and for a while Lib Dem) Central Governent, that has left the Council with no financial resilience when they messed up.

No more party politics! No more divisions that see Birmingham diminished and its citizens impoverished. Get to work and plan, plan, plan, with urgency, with compassion, with purpose, with intent, with haste, and with the knowledge that you are supposed to be working for us, in OUR interests!