Not wanting to let the City Council's cuts consultation exercise pass unchallenged, I attended their "We asked. You said, What next?" meeting at Forest Fields Community Centre tonight. Councillor Hassan Ahmed claimed that he and the council were opposed to the cuts but when questioned further this opposition seemed to be rather abstract. Local people deserve a lot better than him and his cronies.

Only 5 residents bothered to turn up to the meeting and we were almost outnumbered by councillors (Ahmed and Ibrahim) and council staff and the two Area 4 managers. It's rather strange to know that Forest Fields has a manager (well, two actually).

Councillor Ahmed outlined the results of the City Council's first survey. Rather than question the need for cuts to services this took the approach of asking residents what they would most like to keep. Presumably they'll be cutting the rest. Depressingly, people rated 'Tackling crime and antisocial behaviour' as most important (4.3 out of 5) followed by Refuse collection (4.2). These were rated more highly than 'Services for the elderly and vulnerable people', Child protection, 'Public transport and Schools. I suppose that tells you something about the priorities of people who bother filling in these questionnaires. As a result of this Councillor Ahmed said that there would be no funding cut to the Councils 90+ Community Protection Officers. Great.

Something that the Councillor didn't point out but that I thought was quite interesting was that all of the categories were given average scores of greater than 2.5, and all but one category was given an average over 3. These results look suspiciously like people want to keep all of their services.

However, before we get too carried away with the Council's game of playing different services off against each other, it's worth knowing that, for the entire NG7 post code area (with a population over 25,000), only 300 people responded to the survey. This is a tiny response rate and basically means that the survey cannot be said to be representative. It would be undemocratic for the Council to make decisions based on these results rather than properly consulting the people. When I pointed this out to Councillor Ahmed he said that was a bigger issue that he didn't want to get into.

There was also an opportunity for people to mention areas they thought could be cut. Suggestions included money for consultants, councillors' expenses, the Arrow and the Council's posters and advertising campaigns. Unsurprisingly, Councillor Ahmed thought he deserved his £10,000 allowance.

Councillor Ahmed then claimed that he was against the cuts although he did not agree with some anti-cuts protestors that the Council should run at a deficit in order to save the city's services. When I pushed him about what he'd done to oppose the cuts he said he'd been to some demonstrations. He also said the City Council was making representations to the government. It didn't sound like very serious opposition, in either case.

We were then invited to talk about what issues we thought were important in our local area. Apart from a complaint about there being too many speed bumps the only issue raised was that there weren't enough free spaces for local kids. Councillor Ahmed promised to put some of his personal budget towards paying for youth projects.

The meeting ended on a bizarre note with a hamper being raffled off to the assorted locals.

The Council's propaganda about this series of contrived meetings bills it as 'Your City. Your Services." but nothing could be further from the truth. The only time the Council want to know what we think is when they want to sugar coat taking our services away from us. The pathetic number of people who are willing to constructively engage with their consultation gives some idea of how low people's expectations of the Council are.

Forest Fields, and the whole of Nottingham, deserve better than this shower. These representatives and managers can't be trusted with our services. We need to take action to defend them ourselves.