LET'S USE 2015 TO REDISCOVER THE SPIRIT OF 1945

ANOTHER new year is upon us and in just over four months we face a stark choice about the kind of country we want Britain to be.

The impact of austerity over the last four and a half years has been felt by nearly everyone living in Derby.

It’s resulted in local people seeing their wages fall relative to prices, forced others to accept lower paid employment after losing their jobs and left too many young people unemployed.

It’s cut a swathe through our local public services, hitting the city’s most vulnerable and needy citizens the hardest. But everyone else in Derby has been affected too. From waiting longer for NHS appointments to paying to have your brown bin collected to no longer seeing floral displays on the city’s roundabouts.

Our public services define a decent society, yet we are on a trajectory that will take public spending down to a level not seen since the 1930s.

Meanwhile, Britain’s wealthiest individuals have been handed huge tax cuts, privatised utility and train operating companies have been fleecing hard pressed consumers and highly profitable multinational companies pay no tax.

But it doesn’t have to be this way. This is the year the public has a chance to change direction.

We can make sure the economy works for everyone, not just those at the top.

We can start to make capitalism the slave of democracy, not the other way around. After all, the banks, the privatised companies and the multinationals operating in the UK make their profits from the British people and should be accountable to the British people.

We can make sure that funding for public services is distributed more equitably. This would secure a fair deal for Derby by ending the perverse funding system that resulted in government imposing disproportionate cuts on our city, while increasing funding for wealthier areas.

If we do that, we can reduce the deficit responsibly, without threatening our NHS or short changing our children and their future.

As the Labour leader, Ed Miliband, said in his New Year message on Wednesday, this isn’t about idle dreams or empty promises. It's about a real, concrete plan: a plan for a recovery which reaches your kitchen table.

Seventy years ago my Mam and Dad were part of the generation that elected the first post-war Labour Government.

When the country was broke after fighting an all-consuming war, it was my parents’ generation who built the NHS, a modern welfare state and homes for people to live in.

They did all that and the government still managed to deal with the nation’s debts. They did it by growing the economy, securing full employment and ensuring a bigger proportion of the nation’s income went into workers’ wage packets. This generated the tax revenues needed to bring about the societal transformation they achieved.

We owe it to that wartime generation to rediscover the spirit of 1945 to make sure we don’t squander their legacy for which they made huge sacrifices.

The power is in our hands. But as my Dad used to say, it all amounts to nothing if together we don't stand.

Happy New Year everyone.