IF David Cameron told you to go and put your head in a gas oven, would you do it?

You would not. You’d say: “Sorry, David, run that one past me again, would you? I’m not sure I heard you correctly.”

Yet his government – obsequiously assisted in Wiltshire by our unitary authority - is picking apart the very foundations of our public services and the great majority of the public seem to be either unaware of what’s happening, or disinclined to challenge it.

Maybe it’s that old British fatalism (aka laziness) at work again.

We all (myself included) say it sometimes, don’t we? “No point in trying to change anything, they’ll do what they want anyway.” Thereby conveniently absolving ourselves of responsibility for anything that happens or the need to do anything about it.

However, we cannot be surprised that the last vestiges of our county’s youth service are now under threat.

Call Me Jane and her crew, you will recall, denied with great indignation that they were effectively closing down the service two years ago, when they slashed the budget, leaving only a skeleton workforce.

I’m sure they didn’t intend this at the time, but now even the poor old skeleton is to be kneecapped.

Under orders from Call Me Dave to save another £25m, Wiltshire has put its remaining community youth officers and assistant community youth officers at risk of redundancy.

The proposal is to reduce their ranks from 18 to seven full-time equivalents.

Naturally, the council tried to bury the bad news by announcing it just as everyone was going off on a Bank Holiday. Just like they do at Westminster. Wasn’t that clever! Shame it didn’t work.

A briefing note to elected members thoughtfully points out that this is “an unsettling time” for those who might be about to lose their jobs, and as it is “likely to have some impact on their current situation”, they might need a bit of moral support.

So might our area boards, tasked with responsibility for finding constructive stuff for young people to do.

As the briefing note puts it so beautifully: “Essentially community areas will become more adept at managing local arrangements with the community resource that they have round the table, in line with the council’s priority to enable communities to do more for themselves.”

Thank you so much for all that enabling, chaps. I’m sure we’ve never felt so enabled in our lives! What they mean, of course is: “Get on with it and don’t expect anything from us.”

If only they had the guts to say so in plain English, instead of mincing words.

anneriddle36@gmail.com