Wednesday, August 25, 2010

Tory Chancellor George ‘Mad dog’ Osborne’s budget hits the poor the hardest, now that Osborne is in power, he has the levers to make the poor suffer













Dear All

As soon as the Tories got into power the first item on their agenda was George Osborne’s emergency Budget.

After so long in the wilderness, they set about making sure that their favourite target the poor knew that the Tory boot was to be firmly placed back on their necks.

Now, the emergency budget proposals are filtering through and no surprise it is the poor who bear the brunt and are getting hit the hardest.

I have long held the belief anyone who votes Tory who is working class is a mug.

The Labour Party desperate to appear on the side of the working class now they have been removed from government has said that the budget is a “shocking and unfair attack” on Britain’s children and families.

Research by the Institute for Fiscal Studies has assessed the impact of the budget on all the announced benefit cuts.
The IFS said:

“It shows that, once all of the benefit cuts are considered, the tax and benefit changes announced in the emergency Budget are clearly regressive as, on average, they hit the poorest households more than those in the upper-middle of the income distribution in cash, let alone percentage, terms.”

So, rather than a new era, it is Thatcher again, David Cameron plays Denis and Osborne dons the dress and mantle of the ‘hammer of the poor’.

For some considerable time, well before the election I said that Osborne was a wee shit and it seems that I was proven right again.

George Laird right again!

The IFS say their anaysis clearly contradicts that of Chancellor George Osborne who peddled the falsehood that when taken as a whole, his Budget is progressive.

This was peddled by the coalition of Tories/Lib Dems because Clegg got an income tax cut raising the personal allowance threshold.

With an increasingly unhappy Lib Dems, the coalition could be heading for serious problems.

Lib Dems Activists are angry, they have seen their support slump and they are seen very much in the role of quislings, doing Tory dirty work.

The IFS report said:

“Low-income households of working age lose the most as a proportion of income from the tax and benefit reforms announced in the emergency Budget.“

Did anyone seriously think that George Osborne wasn’t going to protect the rich and big business?

Another move by Osborne was the decision from April 2011 to link benefits to the Consumer Price Index rather than the Retail Price Index.

This is to ensure and is very likely to mean less generous benefits in the years ahead.

In other words shifting the goal posts so matter what happens the poor will always get less.

Yvette Cooper, the Shadow Work and Pensions Secretary, said:

“These figures show the Government is pursuing a shocking and unfair attack on children and families. The idea that the poorest families with children should end up being hit hardest is appalling.”

This is from a woman who fully supported Alastair Darling wanting to introduce cuts harder and deeper than Thatcher.

Even the ‘East Coast Weasel’ Iain Gray, the Labour MSP leader at Holyrood is getting in on the ‘save the show’, he said:

“The IFS report once again exposes that George Osborne’s budget is for the rich and will hammer the poor.”

In many respects he should be pleased; it means Osborne is carrying on New Labour’s mantle and torch.

Unsurprisingly the Treasury said it rejected the IFS report and stands “full square” behind its own figures.

This is the same Treasury that plunged Britain through the floor under Gordon Brown and Alastair Darling.

One thing which I said many years ago is that George Osborne hates the poor and disadvantaged, now he has power to inflict suffering using the economic climate as cover.

I expect Osborne to relish the challenge as heir to Thatcher.

Yours sincerely

George Laird
The Campaign for Human Rights at Glasgow University

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