Tuesday 5 October 2010

"Nothing will remain intact": There's a cheering thought!


The country has accepted that there would have been cuts regardless of which party was elected.

Many people are happy that government will become smaller, and Tories in particular have been rejoicing that the size of the state, which no one would deny has grown hugely over the last 13 years, is to be cut drastically.

By the same token no one is dreadfully happy when the cuts affect them.

I’ve heard pensioners complaining about the tax they pay for all wasted services for “these young people”, or the “unemployed”, and who have welcomed the cuts with open arms, point out that of course they mustn’t cut anything for them.

Yesterday I heard a Tory activist at the conference say that whist she was all for the cutting agenda of Mr Cameron’s government, she was very angry at the cuts in child benefit because she had just had her first baby. She seemed totally oblivious to how utterly selfish that made her sound. “Cut everything but me”.

Today’s carry on, for I can’t think of much else to call it, has been an unedifying spectacle. Upset by the reaction of middle England, as represented by the Daily Mail, it seems to have been a mad scramble to recoup lost ground with the core support.

First of all it was announced that there is to be a married couples allowance brought in before the next election, but Tory ministers knew nothing about it, much less their Liberal colleagues (indicating that it had been dreamed up overnight by the damage limitation team). Then we have had Dave doing a series of television interviews to tell us that he is sorry; he really should have said before the election that he was going to cut Child Benefit, whereas, in fact, the tv stations easily found the clip of George telling conference last year that it would NOT happen.

Confusion abounds as no one is sure how much this married couples allowance is, with various people saying that it will be as little as £150 per annum and others saying it will be much more; and now it seems that the reduction in Child Benefit will affect more people than previously thought because of coming changes in tax thresholds.

Now (
according to the Times) a senior Cabinet Minister talking about universal benefits has said that nothing will remain intact. So there are pensioners all over the country worrying about free tv licences; or whether the winter fuel payments of £250, (or £400 for over 80s) will be abolished, or cut, or means tested.

Additionally, it has been pointed out that, if these cuts are being made to assure the international money markets that Britain means business and the economy is in safe hands, then today’s confusion, back pedalling and policy making by the Daily Mail, will have done the AAA rating no earthly good!

If they know what cuts are to be made it’s time we were put out of our misery and told about them.

And it’s time the government got a grip. They are running around like headless chickens more reminiscent of a government which has been in power for 10 years and has run out of talent than one which is fresh off the opposition benches.

22 comments:

  1. What are you on about?

    The reform programme for welfare, benefits and tax has been well researched, and exceptionally well reviewed - by IDS and the Centre for Social Justice.

    Besides, welfare for people earning £45-50k a year?! NOT BLOODY LIKELY! Why should people in the TOP 10% in the UK in terms of earnings have ANY KIND of universal rights to welfare?

    Why? Because they feel like spawning a kid? Welfare is for the needy, not the idle middle to upper classes.

    ReplyDelete
  2. They were elected as headless chickens , when Camoron did not tell the libs to go f... themselves and join labour in a coalition, which the Tories should have resisted tooth and claw to bring down asap to recieve a full and proper mandate from the people, they cut their own heads off for now we have just a poor relation substitute for the last incumbent twats!

    The people never get the govt. that will work for them as govt. should. Its always lie, lie ,lie, take ,take, take, tax, tax, tax, where is the govt that would say rip the bankers down confiscate their wealth and use that to run the country, for truly we owe them nothing!

    ReplyDelete
  3. Looks like we've got another useless government like the last useless government. Ill thought out ideas that sound good in soundbites at a conference but don't last ten minutes under the glare of media scrutiny. And when cast iron is confronted with the realities of his ill thought out policies what does he do ? Well instead of standing up for his policies he immediately buckles and makes up another story about a new marriage allowance or something. Yet another tier of officialdom required to administer that I suppose.
    Why don't we ever get a government that says 'Ok this is what we're going to do. If you're not happy then kick us out in 4 years but in the meantime do one'

    ReplyDelete
  4. But Dean, whilst cutting welfare benefits for people on £44k, he is still going to be paying it for people on £80k. Does that make any sense if you feel that £44k is too much to be deserving of benefits.

    And he hurts the stay at home mum, and I thought that Tories would approve of a mother that stayed at home and dedicated her life to child raising.

    Then he announces a policy that he hadn’t run by other cabinet ministers, even his own, to compensate some people who have kids, but not the ones he’s hurt.

    Then he admits that he’s sorry he didn’t put the cuts in his manifesto.

    I could agree that welfare is not for the rich, but for heaven’s sake you’re pretty rich at £87,000 a year, and still entitled to money for raising your kids. Paid for by people earning £9k

    (And yes, I know you are going to change that, but so far it hasn’t happened, and who knows if it will. After all Osborne said emphatically only 12 months ago that there would be NO LOSS OF UNIVERSAL BENEFITS.)

    ReplyDelete
  5. They were too desperate for power to risk that Indyanhat.

    A first election that failed to give them a majority after 13 years of madness meant that a second election could have been just as bad...or worse.

    ReplyDelete
  6. Ah Hugh (welcome by the way) that is a good question.

    A government with guts?

    The trouble is, he knew the policy was wrong as soon as people pointed out the flaws. Why didn't someone point out these flaws before it was announced?

    Is it because everyone is frightened to contradict him?

    And will he buckle if the Daily Wail doesn't like other reforms?

    He'd better look out of he tries to take something from pensioners. As the bulk of their readership will be in that catagory, I imagine they will be scathing about that.

    Time for a rethink Dave?

    I know, take it out of the dole scroungers' money. No papers will stick up for them.

    ReplyDelete
  7. Oh dear! Time to engage the back pedal gear, but don’t tell our dear friends the Lib Dems. What a fiasco and these people think they should be in government with the SNP in Scotland? I see that David Cameron’s Wendy Alexander “bring it on” moment lasted a very short time indeed. Dean probably hopes we all missed it!

    ReplyDelete
  8. Dean is obviously engaging in Tory humour (rather than answer points on his own blog). Well researched and reviewed? By whom? Andy Coulson? There is objectivity for you, few police back-handers and bobs your uncle!

    ReplyDelete
  9. Might I suggest this on 4OD before Dean gets on his high horse:

    http://www.channel4.com/programmes/dispatches/4od#3129326

    ReplyDelete
  10. It does not make clear that Jennifer Elliot committed suicide as a result of the News of the World's expose. An expose that they paid a serving Met police officer for. That alone should explain the Met's reluctance to investigate the Coulson affair but is doubtless only the tip of the iceberg!

    ReplyDelete
  11. Very interesting programme Munguin. Thanks for putting up that link.

    I think we have all known for sometime that Rupert Murdoch runs the country. He certainly seems to have owned Tony Blair, and now it would seem David Cameron.

    What is much more frightening is that they are tapping the police's phones and there is therefore a reluctance to investigate very obvious crimes.

    It is more than interesting that the officer in charge of investigating the News of the World situation now works for the Times!

    It seems that he owns the police too.

    As David Putnam says, this is a travesty in a pluralist democracy.

    ReplyDelete
  12. Anti-Toryism is rife here. It's like the damn Prague Spring!

    ReplyDelete
  13. I'm not sure what you mean by that Dean...

    ReplyDelete
  14. I don’t think that Alexander Dubcek was anti-Tory Dean. However, let us hope that the UK can go the same way as Czechoslovakia and have a happy dis-union in that case funnily enough without the need for the referendum that David Cameron is now so keen on.

    ReplyDelete
  15. ;)

    I mean, this blog is rife with anti-establishment rhetoric. Just like the Prague Spring, radicalism revolting against an established order; without real rational reasoning.

    ReplyDelete
  16. I think that in 1968 Alexander Dubcek as the leader of Czechoslovakia was the establishment Dean so you are a bit off kilter there. He wanted to reform communism surely there is nothing wrong with that. Didn’t David Cameron try to dress himself up in reform clothes today in his speech with all that rubbish about the big society.

    Dean you were not so quick to criticise this blog when it was the Labour party establishment it attacked, but now that it is your lot you don’t feel any obligation to be objective.

    ReplyDelete
  17. HA HA...

    You see me as an Alexander Dubcek, and David Cameron as the murderous Soviet regime of Leonid Brezhnev?

    Surely not!!!!

    ;)

    ReplyDelete
  18. So you do see similarities between Dave and Leonid?

    Have you heard of Brezhnev stagnation? Or the Brezhnev cult of personality? He clamped down on freedom wherever he saw it most particularly getting rid of any freedom that Khrushchev had introduced. He brooked no opposition.

    There was deterioration in the living standards of the ordinary Soviet and an increase in the standards of the party elite during his tenure.

    Hmmm... I’m beginning to see connections.

    <:¬)))

    ReplyDelete
  19. Not true Tris,

    Under Brezhnev, the average income and standard of living was higher for the ave Ruskie than even today.

    Besides, he was way better than that damn revisionist, self serving twit Krushchev...

    ReplyDelete
  20. Well Dean, I can't talk for today. Democracy certainly hasn't been good for many of the Soviet Union's countries.

    But Brezhnev Stagnation is recorded thus:

    http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brezhnev_stagnation

    ReplyDelete
  21. Dean...See also:

    http://easyweb.easynet.co.uk/~socappeal/russia/part6.html

    ReplyDelete