I have heard Dorset County Council cuts will be in the region of £45million.

Perhaps the Dorset for You website might be one target to improve or slim down.

Also, there’s that disastrous new computer system.

It has led to at least one emergency foster carer I know having to wait far too long for the allowance she uses to care for our most vulnerable children.

I think most of us hope and imagine those cuts will be at the expense of superfluous levels of management, exorbitant consultancy fees and ‘fact finding’ expeditions (‘jollies’ to you and me).

But I fear we are about to be disabused of that common sense idea. Seven libraries at risk I have heard. Is that true?

You will be told, no doubt, this is all the fault of our profligate previous government.

When you hear that, please remember that the money was spent giving us the best public services we have ever had, at any time in our history.

Please remember that it has kept a huge proportion of people in Dorset in work.

Public sector workers keep Dorchester for one afloat, and when we stop buying, local businesses will tremble.

I have also heard of ordinary, not highly paid, public sector workers struggling to cover for the colleagues who have conveniently provided ‘natural wastage’.

No doubt they are living it up on gold-plated public service pensions! You will be told that too. The average public service pension is around £8,000pa.

If volunteers charged the community at the minimum wage for their voluntary work, it would more than cover that by far.

Indeed, when your library closes, when your playgroup goes, will you be able to step in and provide the service for your community?

That is what will be expected of you, whether you are already struggling to get by or not.

You will be grateful for your ex-librarian or ex-teacher on their ‘golden pensions’ then, believe me.

Nothing is what it seems. beware of simplistic excuses.

Next time you are provided with a vital service from a volunteer, just check how and why that volunteer came to do the work they are doing.

Volunteers are not ‘the third sector’.

That hides the truth too. Volunteers do so from a sense of community and ethics.

Ask their opinion on matters. Might be interesting.

Vicki Black, Dorchester Labour Party Chairman and Co-op Party member, Ashington Street, Dorchester