Could someone tell the Prime Minister and Deputy Prime Minister, that they are patronising hypocrites when they try to tell the people of this country - apparently including the whole of Scotland, the North of England, Northern Ireland and Wales according to Nick Clegg - that they can't afford to fund our supposed dependency on welfare any more ; and liars or delusional when they tell us their policies are reducing our debts and our deficit.
At their public relations press conference at a tractor factory in Essex the other day, Cameron and Clegg helpfully explained that they had no choice but to cut the deficit by any means necessary to get us out of debt.
Never mind that their so-called austerity policies - welfare for the richest, cuts for the the majority, (including those who need it most - the disabled, unemployed, poor and pensioners) have pushed us back into recession, unemployment over 2.6 million (with the short term fall of 35,000 soon to be wiped out again by a longer term rise to an estimated 2.85 million by the end of the year). Just to top it off they've actually actually increased the trade deficit (value of exports, minus value of imports) by almost £1 billion between January and February this year alone , by making the vicious circle of falling demand and rising unemployment that happens in a recession worse by sacking so many teachers, doctors, nurses and lecturers and by denying benefit to or cutting benefits for the disabled, unemployed, pensioners and working people on low incomes. Given all that any fall in the budget deficit will be short term and soon reversed without a change in policy (1) - (4).
(For instance the abolition of almost all tax credits has more than cancelled out any benefits to those working on low incomes from raising the starting rate for paying income tax to £8,000. While the 50p tax rate for the richest was cut, the starting rate for the 40% tax rate was lowered, so hitting middle and upper middle earners harder too. ) (5) - (7) (I have to admit here to having been wrong in supporting replacing tax credits with a higher starting rate for income tax)
Deputy Prime Minister Nick Clegg also explained (at the tractor factory) that Scotland, the North of England, Wales and Northern Ireland had all become too dependent on state hand-outs and that this "gravy train" was fine during the boom times but that we couldn't afford it any more.
(Watched this live on the BBC's News 24 , but can't find a complete transcript of it nor a complete video online)
Cameron and Clegg are paid with taxpayer money and dependent on throwing public money and lives to banks, arms companies (including as they sell arms to dictatorships killing Arab Spring democracy protesters), the PFI and PPP contractors, privatised rail operators and the pointless Afghanistan war and the Olympic circus like there's no tomorrow ; while allowing the recipients of taxpayers' money to avoid taxes themselves through tax havens. This gets them donations to their election campaigns from the recipients of these subsidies and tax breaks - big banks, firms and billionaires donating to party funds (8) - (10).
What have Cameron or Clegg ever done for the people of Scotland, Wales, the North of England, Northern Ireland, or the UK as a whole, in return for their £130,000 plus state funded annual salaries - five times the median wage - other than rob us to pay donors to party funds, while pretending that we simply don't understand that whatever's best for them and their donors must be what's best for everyone? (which is a pathetic fallacy based on a false assumption of identity of interests.) (11)
That's apart from the fact that London gets immensely higher levels of public spending on the infrastructure required for a strong economy (particularly transport) than any other part of the UK - and that the heads of the City of London's financial sector are the ones who caused the crisis and recession and who are paying themselves obscene bonuses with taxpayers' money. We are all now paying for the City of London's financial sector - and the Channel Island, Man , Belize and Cayman Island tax havens which caused the financial crisis and will cause another unless they're shut down (12).
Even the banks that didn't get bailed out were only saved from falling like dominoes as banks did in the 1929 Great Crash in the US by the majority of taxpayers paying for the bail-outs. The Conservative party's funding from banks, hedge funds and the rest of the financial sector has increased to at least 50% of all donations to their party's funds (13).
That explains why they cap benefits for people who desperately need the money but not bankers' bonuses for people who already have hundreds of times more than they could possibly need - and why the government hasn't made any serious attempt to close down the tax havens (just some window dressing) or re-regulate the financial sector. It also suggests that when the Conservatives say "we're all in it together" they really mean that they and their billionaire, banker and oil and arms company pals are all working together to rob everyone else.
Come the next general election this pair of public welfare recipient, dependent, hypocrites' days of living off the state and off of people who actually do work that benefits others, while contributing nothing themselves, will be coming to an abrupt end.
Sources
(1) = BBC News 25 Apr 2012 'UK economy in double-dip recession', , 'The UK economy has returned to recession, after shrinking by 0.2% in the first three months of 2012.A sharp fall in construction output was behind the surprise contraction, the Office for National Statistics said.A recession is defined as two consecutive quarters of contraction. The economy shrank by 0.3% in the fourth quarter of 2011.'
(2) = ONS Press Release 16 April 2012 'Labour Market Statistics, April.', http://www.ons.gov.uk/ons/rel/lms/labour-market-statistics/april-2012/index.html , 'The unemployment rate was 8.3 per cent of the economically active population, down 0.1 on the quarter. There were 2.65 million unemployed people, down 35,000 on the quarter. This is the first quarterly fall in unemployment since the three months to May 2011.
(3) = BBC News 04 May 2012 'High unemployment to do 'permanent damage' to UK', http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-17942814 ; 'The UK unemployment rate will rise from its current 8.3% to almost 9% by the end of this year, doing "permanent damage to the UK's productive capacity", a think tank has said.The National Institute of Economic and Social Research (NIESR) said that the persistent weakness in the economy was "unprecedented".'
(4) = ONS Press Release 12 Apr 2012 'UK Trade, February 2012',
http://www.ons.gov.uk/ons/rel/uktrade/uk-trade/february-2012/index.html , 'The deficit on seasonally adjusted trade in goods was £8.8 billion in February, compared with the deficit of £7.9 billion in January.'
(5) = Independent 27 Dec 2011 'Britain's poorest hit by £2.5bn 'stealth tax' , http://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/politics/britains-poorest-hit-by-25bn-stealth-tax-6281832.html , 'Tax cuts for low and middle-income families in April will be dwarfed by hidden reductions in tax credits, according to a study for The Independent.
The analysis found that the £1bn of tax cuts in April will be outweighed by reductions of more than £2.5bn in the complex tax-credit scheme.'(6) = Independent on Sunday 18 Mar 2012 'Working poor left out in the cold as benefit U-turn targets better-off ', http://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/politics/working-poor-left-out-in-the-cold-as-benefit-uturn-targets-betteroff-7576431.html
(7) = DirectGov Budget 2011 Tax Changes, http://www.direct.gov.uk/en/nl1/newsroom/budget/budget2011/dg_wp195609
(8) = Campaign Against the Arams Trade - Export Credits,
http://www.caat.org.uk/issues/ecgd.php
9) = guardian.co.uk 09 Jul 2011 '300 schools to be built with £2bn PFI scheme', http://www.guardian.co.uk/education/2011/jul/19/300-schools-built-private-finance-scheme
(10) = Guardian 09 Mar 2012 'Olympic Games risk going over budget as cost hits £11bn, say MPs', http://www.guardian.co.uk/sport/2012/mar/09/olympic-games-budget-cost
(11) = www.parliament.uk 'Frequently Asked Questions: MPs ',
http://www.parliament.uk/about/faqs/house-of-commons-faqs/members-faq-page2/
(12) = BBC News 18 Dec 2011 'Transport spending 'skewed towards London', http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-16235349
(13) = Bureau of Investigative Journalism 08 Feb 2011 'Tory Party funding from City doubles under Cameron', http://www.thebureauinvestigates.com/2011/02/08/city-financing-of-the-conservative-party-doubles-under-cameron/
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