Angry Mums on a deprived estate have slammed Hounslow Borough Council for "penny-pinching" after a children's playground was forced to close - reports the Hounslow Chronicle.
The cost-cutting council recently removed swings, slides and a climbing frame from the play area on the Beavers Lane Estate. The equipment was deemed unsafe, but leisure services provider CIP has been unable to fund repairs or replacements.
One Mum-of-three said: "This administration's penny-pinching is hitting kids on this estate - including my eight-year-old girl - very hard."
"First the community teacher was cut, then a dance teacher from Waterman's art centre who used to hold classes at the Hub was axed, and now this."
No doubt speaking for hundreds of local parents, she added: "My daughter loved the play area and it's really sad it's gone."
To be fair, councils like Hounslow are operating under a great deal of financial pressure, caught between insufficient funding from central government and the deadly unpopularity of hiking council tax bills unreasonably.
It's for local MPs like Ann Keen to justify why her local council can't be given more to prevent such cuts by the government. Especially when she's enthusiastically intending to approve paying £2.5bn a year extra to the already lavishly-funded but endlessly wasteful EU.
If the government can't afford to give local councils more, why is she going to approve wasting such vast amounts of public money by handing it to an organisation that hasn't had its accounts approved by auditors for twelve years running?
If Mrs Keen doesn't block that extra money for the EU when it comes to the vote in Parliament, local residents will know who's really to blame for cuts to local services come the next election.
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