IT’S worrying times at the Guildhall, where plans are being drawn up for yet more cuts as we head into autumn.

In true mystic meg fashion, several months ago The Source warned the good burghers of Worcester that more city council cuts are surely on the way - and as gloomy as it is to break this news, we’ve been proved right.

An old savings blueprint, the wonderfully named Medium Term Financial Strategy (MTFS), is redundant, dead, about as useful as a chocolate fireguard amid the harsh reality of the public spending squeeze.

All kinds of weird and wacky ideas have already been suggested for saving money ahead of the publication of a new MTFS, which is happily expected to be published just in time for the start of the Christmas spending period.

Indeed, as this fine organ reported yesterday, we’ve now got to the stage where staff are actively encouraging politicians to come up with “unthinkable” ideas for cutting spending.

One such “unthinkable” idea mentioned this week was reducing the number of councillors - down from the current tally of 36 to as few as 25.

So what do our elected members think of this?

Enter Councillor Stephen Hodgson, veteran Tory: “It’s a bit like turkeys voting for Christmas.”

If it came down to a straight choice between closing playgrounds and reducing street sweeping or this, I know which one our readers would go for.

If anyone at the Guildhall wants us to run a poll, you know where we are. Wink.

* TALKING of playgrounds, it’s been calamity central at the city council this week after workers started to rip-up a facility in Warndon Villages without telling the local politician first.

A bumbling officer emailed Labour’s Roger Berry and Geoff Williams, telling them the Howcroft Green play facility will be dismantled, somehow under the wrong impression it was situated in their Gorse Hill ward.

So when angry residents confronted their local councillor over it, who happens to be Tory Stephen Hodgson, he didn’t have a clue it was going on.

There’s nothing quite like being kept in the loop!

* IN other news, I am hearing Nick Clegg has been declared ‘fit to work’ by ATOS, despite clearly not having a spine.