THERE ARE TERRIBLE CUTS HERE...

... BUT IT'S EVEN WORSE IN ENGLAND

SNAPS ON SUNDAY

See, that's how easy it is to change things.

Thanks Denmark, we will look forward to that.

Yessing in Dundee.

You can tell a lot about people by the company they keep!

The Lemon Disorder...

Now they look like such nice people ...
Britain First?

And so law abiding.

The Klu Klux Klan.... wow

Has anyone mentioned the royals. Prince Philip is Greek
Does that mean the next king will be a ....foreigner?

Awwwww...paeur wee sconnie.

That's something to look forward to.
Wonder how big the food banks will be then.

So, it's iceberg either way...

Proud boast, Tubby...

Oh wait... he's the Middle East Peace Envoy... How could that be?

Now they may not be traitors to their country, but to the people
who voted for them, they most certainly are.

Oh dear...any comment Alistair? 

Yes... it will Alaan... You ever thought of politics for a career?

Thank heavens someone has pointed that out.
We people  to whom it was supposed to trickle down
have know that for some while.

Absolutely right. How dare they do this?

Oh dear... what happens if Russian warship looms...? Oh yeah, they send someone
from England and it only takes a couple of days to get here.

To see yourself as others see you...

Aye, No thanks indeed...

If it ain't broke....

How quickly people become Scottish when they haven't quite made it.

SNAPS ON SUNDAY

Yes. Danny Alexander and all the other people who think that it is fair
 that THEIR kids have to have bedrooms in the housing the state pays for them,
despite not living there full time, and that we should pay for visits

I'm incredibly rich and frankly neither I, nor any of my toff cabinet
gives a stuff how you live, or indeed IF you live

Odd that!

Sinking without a trace. Water Rats.

Incase someone like me is saying that you're a chancing old Spiv?

Yer on your own Ken. No one else gives a toss

Glad it is working out for someone.

Little things mean a lot Johann

It's not all about the SNP

Johanns wee things keep on rearing their ugly head... and will for some time

That's the bloke. Probably soon to be an ex-MP , but don';t worry folks,
he'll just go into the retirement chamber. Lord Clegg of Fudge

Yep... just imagine. No more Blair.
No more pandering to the rich south east

But even from here you can see the cut is
 altogether better on the panto dame

Does anything our MPs say ever make any difference at all?
Nope, thought not.

What complete and utter hell. Nope can't be done.

Completely Simples

Hmmm, that died a death, Dave. Prepare for withdrawal.
Monsieur Hollande's not for turning! 

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 70^th 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?

GEORGIE PORGIE PUDDING AND PIE, OPENED HIS MOUTH AND TOLD A LIE

According to the Institute for Fiscal Studies

Up till now the Institute for Fiscal Studies (IFS) has been the Tories’ friend. But following their assertion that George Osborne’s spending cuts are NOT fair and that they would hit the poorest harder than the richest, they must be off the Christmas Card list of the Prime Minister and the Chancellor.

The think tank concluded that, with the exception of the richest 2% of the population (the billionaires), the least well-off would be hit the hardest, and families with children would lose out the most.

They described the tax and benefit changes as regressive rather than progressive across the bulk of the population.

Nick Clegg, David’s poodle, hit back, loosing what little credibility he had left, accusing critics of “frightening people” with claims that they were doing unfair things “when we are not. So nah nah nah nah nah!”.

For goodness sake Nicky. We’re not the bunch of morons you clearly take us for. We may not have gone to Eton, Harrow or Westminster, like the bulk of the cabinet, but we know when the taxes are going up, prices are going up, jobs are being lost, benefits are coming down, and the services, which are appalling to begin with, are getting worse that that is a bad deal for us.

We also know that if you have 250,000 a year and the price of petrol goes up and VAT goes up and you lose your child benefit, and food goes up, you don’t actually miss it. However, if you used to earn £150 a week and now you’re now on £51 benefit and there are no jobs, and you can’t afford Mr Duncan-Smith’s bus fares (which are going up) to the nearest town where there are jobs, maybe 50 miles away, so that you can compete with the hundreds of thousands of people already there for these jobs..... it’s a bit of a damned bind don’t you know.

The think-tank also challenged Osborne’s claim that cuts to departments averaged 19%, which he had made a huge flourish of telling us at the end of his statement. It was better, he had said, than Labour’s request that reductions be kept to 20%.

Well no, it wasn’t actually. It pointed out Osborne’s calculations took no account the £6bn of cuts already announced in his emergency Budget which put it well over the 22%.

So wee Gideon’s a bit of a fibber and Nick is a patronising git who, hopefully, will lose the leadership as real Liberals, and Democrats, cross the floor, and then lose his seat when the people of Sheffield decide that they might as well have a proper Tory next time.

Instead of the Prime Minister’s tea boy