A decent society needs a thriving public sector as well as a dynamic private sector. There must be a balance between them.
Sadly, the current government is getting the balance badly wrong with excessive cuts in public provision. They are constantly trying to blame others for the effects of these cuts.
But the scale of the cuts has so far been largely academic. That will change from April Fool's Day when we will see their real extent as well as having to pay a lot more for different services.
I fear for working families who will lose childcare credits worth £600 and who may then have to take their children out of nurseries and find it difficult to keep their jobs.
I am concerned that housing benefit cuts will force people to move long distances from their current work and then have to pay more in fast-rising travel costs.
I worry deeply about the impact of throwing hundreds of thousands of public sector workers on the dole without being sure that the private sector can offer new jobs.
There are always arguments about how to improve services and needless waste is the enemy of good provision. Big services like the NHS must always change with the times.
I also accept the need to reduce the deficit although I say that the government is going too far and too fast without looking at how to make the bankers pay their fair share for a crisis that they largely created.
The government doesn't have a mandate for its policies, spends much of its time keeping itself together and often fails to understand what its policies actually do to real people.
The choice about solutions to the economic crisis must be made at the ballot box. But that doesn't mean we simply wait for the election. People are entitled to make their feelings clear before then, peacefully and legally.
We have seen that peaceful public protest can prompt U-turns and rethinks. We need more of these, not just on relatively small issues but on the overall strategy. That is why I will join hundreds of local folk from the North East on the TUC march for jobs, growth and justice in London on 26 March.
Newcastle Chronicle and Journal
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