SINCE the financial crisis in 2007, we have been led to believe that cuts and austerity were the only solutions.

We have seen cuts to the police, cuts to libraries, cuts to youth centres and youth provision, cuts to council-subsidised bus routes, cuts to UK spending aid, cuts in NHS real spending, cuts to local councils - cuts and more cuts.

It was from reading a recent post from a local stating that “we can’t afford to give the NHS a pay rise of 1%”, which really got to me.

During the pandemic, the Government managed to find £22 billion plus of taxpayer money to spend on a failed Test and Trace system.

It also found money to spend on consultants' fees who were paid up to £6,624 a day on the outsourced test and trace network.

As also reported in the national news, the Government admitted it had breached the law by persistently failing to publish details of Covid-19 contracts.

Millions of our pounds of our money has been spent on PPE supplies which could not be used or was paid for at inflated prices to contacts of Conservative peers and Conservative ‘VIPs’.

Many readers will probably buy the same daily newspaper and have done so for many years.

Often, those same papers choose to not report on the above stories or are very selective in what they want their audience to read and believe. The next time these papers tell you, “there’s no money left”, it might be time to ask yourself, why does the ‘magic money tree’ bear fruit for some people, but not for others?

Sally Yalden

Braishfield