Another busy few days away at the CIH conference located in the excellent city of Manchester and how appropriate that it should be in this week that the Chancellor should launch the ‘unplanned’ Comprehensive Spending Review for 2015-2018.
Unplanned because the previous CSR in 2010 set the path for ‘austerity’ with an expectation the cuts contained would be enough to steer us through. The current CSR, however, removes a further £11bn from public expenditure, effectively extending ‘austerity’ well into the term of the next government.
And I say appropriate because it is the North that will feel the pain of the cuts in far more tangible ways than those in the South, albeit both are already struggling with Welfare Reform and the Bedroom tax.
It was also in the North, back in July 1981, where years of poverty, containment and exclusion exploded into some of the most violent riots the…