>The service changes take affect in August, in large part because they can no longer expect the funding for them to exist by then.

I think a more plausible reason is, "withdraw the services now to get people who want that spending and that service irritated, and therefore more likely to get out and vote for it". Keeping service in place till the vote might supress the vote through complacency.

I'm not passing a value judgement on this top-down pressure on the electorate, governments should in theory be neutral and uphold current law, but governments are populated by politicians, and politicians who advocated this still want to advocate it and give it its best electoral chance. In a like "up is down" sense, people who favor cutting this government expenditure should favor the early cuts, they save money... of course, they don't, just sayin.