Friday 13 December 2013

SO WHAT WOULD LABOUR DO?

Another attack on Britain's social security budget has been announced by Gideon, bringer of woe to the poor. He told MPs that he wants to cut benefits even more.

He said many more billions would need to be shaved from ‘welfare’ to avoid deeper cuts in spending by Whitehall departments. 
He admitted that the government's plan to balance its books by 2018-19 would require acceleration in the cuts to departmental budgets from 2.3% in the current parliament to 3.7% between 2016 and 2019.

The Office for Budget Responsibility said that that would leave day-to-day spending by government at its smallest share of national output since 1948.

On current plans, the cuts to government departmental budgets will be 8% by the end of the current financial year and reach 20% by 2018-19.

In short, not only do we have to go through the same cuts again, but half again more on top of that!

However he pointed out that to avoid reducing spending on all departments, the next government will want to undertake further reductions in the welfare budget. If it does that, he admitted, they wouldn’t reach the 1948 number. 
The Institute for Fiscal Studies has said welfare cuts or tax increases totalling £12bn will be needed to avoid a stepping-up of the cuts to government departments and Gideon agrees with this figure.

The chancellor believes his hard line approach will create difficulties for Labour as it makes a choice between backing his line on social security, and keeping faith with the voters who possibly rather mistakenly think that they will never need any kind of help, and not disgusting too many of their more traditional supporter, who likely find the  harshness of the social security cuts to be insupportable.


It may, at this point, be worth remembering that over 45% of the social security bill in Ukok is in respect of retirement pensions.

People have paid into them all their lives, expecting that this money was being put away from their future, only to find out that not a penny piece of it exists. It’s all been blown on punching above our weight for the greater glory of a variety of second rate prime ministers in thrall to US presidents.
 
Much comfort, of course, that will be to most of us as we drag ourselves up to our 70th birthdays working, being hounded by IDS’s DWP as we die of exhaustion in Poundland or its likes for £65 a week dole money, or worse still being thrown off our benefits by untrained staff in Atos desperately trying to reach their monthly target of money saving, and not bothering to check if their victims are conscious or not.

Out-of-work benefits (you know, for skivers not strivers) account for less than 3% of the 'welfare' bill, and out-of-work benefits for the long-term unemployed (the hardcore skivers, the ones that Pete Lilley had a list of) accounts for less than 0.3% of it. 

Of course it suits the government (of whatever colour) to let people believe that it’s all single parents, drug users, chavs and ne’er-do-wells that are eating up the taxes of the hard working “strivers”. The fact that it is all lies doesn’t seem to make much difference to them.

A great deal of the Welfare bill goes to subsidise companies which refuse to pay a living wage to their staff.

***************
The next election is now less than 18 months away. 

The Tories have laid out their outline plans for social security. The public will soon want to know what Labour’s alternatives would be, and how they would make up the money that they would continue to pay to the already denuded DWP budget.

The alternative of course is to give up nuclear weapons, Britain’s seat on the Security Council at America’s right hand, to collect tax from rich people in the City of London, abolish the ridiculously expensive and pretty useless House of Lords and cancel vanity projects like the most expensive railway in the world… Like any of that would be likely to happen.

Over to you Ed and Ed?

Will we all be expected to work till we are 90? Are we just going to starve the unemployed and the sick to death? Or dare we hope that you might levy a little tax on the rich and cut some of Britain's ridiculous posturing as a major power?

17 comments:

  1. Meanwhile those 'Terrorists' as labeled by the British establishment have acted as we expect them to behave in a vindictive way!

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    1. That's the way to do it.

      But then Iceland is a democracy and the Icelandic people were shafted by these bankers. The expect them to be punished.

      The UK is, on the other hand, not even vaguely approaching a democracy, and although the Brits also wanted some sort of punishment for the bankers who shafted them, no one actually gives a stuff what brits think. Certainly not their government.

      Maybe when we are a democracy...

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  2. Unfortunately, most folk in this country, and the UK, are non political these days. The State was disturbed by the radicalism of the '60's and '70's, and took action.
    The average voter has no idea what is just around the corner, and only cry out when the shit hits the fan. It's too late by then.
    This lack of interest in politics by the general public didn't happen by accident. It is the deliberate result of the Westminster Party doing its best to make folk feel helpless, and disengage from politics.
    Bastards.
    Either we escape next year, or it will never happen without bloodshed.

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    1. Well, you're absolutely right Jutie. I don't think they even bother when the shit hits the fan. this government has taken away right after right after right. And who's on the streets.

      Hospitals in England are absolute death traps; GPs' surgeries, according to a report this week are likewise. Everything that can be sold is being sold. profit is now the motive fro every single thing that happens in England. The poor, the sick and the old are being killed off, and we are apparently the only state in the West that cannot, according to our government, afford any kind of welfare state.

      And where are the people? On the streets?

      nope. They are down the pub.

      There was a serious moment tonight on teh New Quiz where one of contestants asked just that question...Why are they not on the streets.

      Apathy, and of course the erosion of the liberty to protest, as students found out last week.

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  3. tris

    surely your post is completely irrelevant (as usual)
    unless you admit you are going to lose the yes vote,
    after all once Independent (ha) the English can lay in
    the Tory bed they made and suffer ! suffer ! suffer !
    for the choice they insanely took.

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    1. Dunno why you're remarking on it, if i's irrelevant AS USUAL! :)

      I don't for a minute think that we will lose the vote, but we still have to live for another 2 years with either the Blue or red Tories, and very possibly in coalition with UKIP haters.

      However, unlike the Blether Together lot, I do accept that it may not go our way.

      I'm already brushing up my Nordic languages so I can escape when they come out of the EU and we lose the Human Rights, Edinburgh is reduced to a talking shop and £4 billion is cut from our income.

      Does Taz know how to bark in Icelandic yet?

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  4. juteman

    Nelson Mandela realised bloodshed was the only way to freedom
    and took that way......of course now THEY choose to ignore the plain
    truth.
    one mans freedom fighter is another's terrorist

    of the 60s and 70s

    Bliss was it in that dawn to be alive,
    But to be young was very heaven!

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    1. I'm glad you have realised at long last that independence is 'freedom' Niko. :-)

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  5. Replies
    1. Niko

      I don't think you want to mention Unite in an article about what Labour would do.....

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    2. LOL Bad word...eh Johann?

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  6. All Gideon has to do is clamp down on Tax avoidance whether by large Corporations or individuals.

    There's a whole lot more than 1 billion a year to be had from doing that than screwing the infirm, destitute, poor, young and old.

    It can't be repeated enough yet the big brains of Westminster Government wont admit that this is the cause of the money shortage to run the welfare system.

    Far to many take from the economy yet don't pay their whack for the privilege. It has to stop.

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    1. But its not about saving; it's about ideology.

      it's about the Tories finally getting to do what they have wanted since all this softness about caring for the poor, and the notion that the poor are people too came in 90-100 or so years ago.

      The realise that there are far too many of the labouring classes, and not enough for them to do. They seem to be happy enough to see them starve or freeze to death.

      The idea that either of the parties is actually going to clamp down in any meaningful way of tax avoidance/evasion, is just fantasy

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    2. This has to be pointed out till the bastards get sick of it and do something (I know..... fat chance). Everything you say is true, but if the fact isn't continually hammered at them they seem to forget that there is indeed an alternative despite what that vicious old harridan was want to say. No Maggie T.I.N.A. was always a fallacy. It was in your time and it is now. May you and your descendents rot in hell.

      I'll breathe now.......... there that's better.

      It just needs said, again and again.

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    3. It's what we do on the net, I guess, David.

      Particularly blogs with massive readerships, like Wings, Newsnet, Derek Bateman which reach so many people, and other really clever ones like Scot Goes Pop, Grumpy Scottish Man, Ian Hamilton and Fazzeldown.

      There's no doubt they are making a difference, but we need to get the message out there to people who don't read political blogs.

      Facebook and Twitter are good ways.


      People who read only papers reckon that we have no chance...

      Wait till the BBC becomes legally obliged to tell something approaching the truth.

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  7. We only have one choice next September to get out of this extreme right wing agenda that is wWestminster and it is called Yes.

    Here’s your democratic choice

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    1. So There is the Tories killing the poor off...or there is Labour killing off the poor.

      And the Liberals are clueless. Surprise!

      Sounds about right.

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