Monday 14 March 2011

H&F Conservatives Spend Up To £50k For Privileged Olympic Tickets While Cutting £33 Million From Front Line Services

Chris Underwood of the Shepherds Bush Blog has scooped this story alleging that Hammersmith and Fulham's Conservative run Council are about to lavish up to £50,000.00 worth of Olympic tickets on Conservative councillors. Chris reports that these tickets will be available for Conservative "councillors' bottoms to grace seats in the Olympic stadium."

It is just short of three weeks since H&F Conservatives agreed a budget cutting £33 million from this year's budget alone. They even added an extra 3.7% cut to the 11.3% cut handed down from the Cameron led government. Most of these cuts will be bourne by local children and our elderly, disabled and homeless neighbours as you can read here. So why are the Tories using up to £50k of extremely scarce financial resource for Olympic tickets?

It would be the height of hypocrisy and bad taste if the Conservative Administration spent any tax payers' money lavishing these tickets on politicians or officials. Cllr. Caroline Needham (Lab), the Borough's Shadow Cabinet for Education and Children's Services commented "This money could be used better to support our young people to become Olympians not funding fat cats to watch sports that many children can't access." These tickets should be sent back or be used for the benefit of some local worthy cause. I hope H&F Conservatives see sense and do precisely that.

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