A crazy day after Manchester City Council confirmed that it was to make 2,000 staff redundant. A few minutes after I’d heard about on the Today programme just after 7am, they rang up to ask me to comment! Apart from a Today interview, which you can listen to here, I’ve done interviews for BBC Radio Manchester, BBC TV North West Tonight, Manchester Evening News, BBC TV News channel and a blog post for The Daily Telegraph which you can read here.

Manchester has been hit by a triple whammy of higher than expected cuts in overall local government funding (29% over four years rather than the expected 20-25%); front-loading of the cuts, so the cuts in years 1 or 2 (2011-13) are much higher; and finally the changes to the way in which money is distributed between councils. According to DCLG’s own figures, using their (now) preferred measure of “Revenue Spending Power”, Manchester faces a cut of 11% in 2011-12 and 7% in 2012-13, totalling £110m (s0me councils face cuts on the same measure of only 2-3% over two years).