THE first cut is the deepest, as the song once said.

Unfortunately for Oxfordshire, we had the first cut some time ago – and we have lost count of how many have been announced since then.

Police and Crime Commissioner Anthony Stansfeld has revealed plans to make cuts in how much the police spends on CCTV cameras of almost 50 per cent.

The buzzwords are efficiency, modernisation, centralisation – which all sound like good things.

But the fear now is that this move – the latest announcement on cuts to public services in the county – could see jobs lost.

And that is not a good thing.

The county has in recent months been clobbered with proclamation after proclamation about why more cuts are needed.

Council services such as help for the homeless, children’s centres and support for people with special needs are among areas facing cuts in a bid to balance the books.

The Government, of course, takes the blame – both because it is making savage cuts, and because we all like to blame the Government when things go wrong.

We live in difficult times and money, as Mick Hucknall once said, really is too tight to mention. But there will come a point where the cuts will have to ease up, or things will really start to hurt.

Even in a county as affluent overall as Oxfordshire, public services cannot just be swept away again and again without some eventual end in sight.