DURING the General Election campaign, the Swindon public were given three core election pledges from the Con-Dem parties.

The first two were national policies and were based around the fact that cuts this year would neither be more than £6 billion and would certainly not be hitting the poorest and most vulnerable in our society. This election pledge was shattered a few weeks ago, when George Osborne delivered a budget speech that cut far more than £6 billion from the economy and through the cuts in housing benefits, the VAT rise and the enormous cuts in local government expenditure (let's not forget that it is local government who protects the vulnerable elderly and young people), the Tories hit the poor and vulnerable most as a result of their ideological budget.

The other election pledge was more locally driven, based around the idea that if the Swindon public finally voted Tory in a General Election, Swindon would get a better financial deal from Central Government. What we have found is quite the opposite, as since the Con-Dem government took power, Swindon has received a worse financial deal than it received before, with places like Bath, Oxford, Gloucester and even Surrey (places I wouldn't characterise as poor areas), all receiving a smaller overall funding cut from Central Government than Swindon.

So I think at this stage, if you are a Swindonian who voted Conservative at the last election, you should feel entitled to ask; what did I vote for?

And, of course, before any Con-Dem member blames the previous Labour Government for them having to make these cuts, let’s not forget that the Conservatives declared that they would match Labour's spending plans from 2005 to 2008 and were for the bailing out of the banks, which is the reason why Britain has a budget deficit in the first place.

This just goes to show that in order to bring about the so-called "New Politics", the Con-Dem parties had to use a past tactic of the "Old Politics", that being the shameless opportunism of blaming the past government in order to make deeply harmful and ideological cuts, while failing to stick to their own election pledges.

COUN DERIQUE MONTAUT Leader of the Swindon Labour Group