I feel nauseus each time I hear him say 'we are all in this together'. The government has a majority of millionaires in the cabinet completely out of touch with real life.
The Lib Dems put out the following poster during the election:
They have now let down those who voted for them who believed they would not raise VAT.
VAT hits all regardless of income and raising it to 20% will hit the poorest the most, where as capital gains tax was only raised to 28%. Raising this higher would have been fairer as the it would not affect the poorest in the country unlike VAT.
On top of this public sector workers are faced with a pay freeze for two years. Considering RPI is currently over 5%, this is in real terms a significant pay cut. On top of this many are likely to lose their jobs in the public sector due to real terms cuts across all government departments of 25% over four years (with the exception of health and foreign aid). How can making thousands of workers redundant and putting them on unemployment benefit help the economy?
The Tories have always been in favour of rolling back the public services and now they can use the fig leaf of the economy to do just that. Harriet Harman was right when she said that the budget was driven by "ideology not by economics".
3 comments:
ok, I disagree about the lib dem let down you speak of. Is that ok? well regardless, here goes.
The tories would have raised taxes by 20% and cut benefits (spending) by 80% if they had a majority government, the lib dems have made this 23% and 77% respectively.
The VAT rate will indeed it the poorest the most I agree, but they didn't introduce VAT on food, which I expected but didn't want. I expect this is because of lib dem influence.
The economy is in a dire state, totally unbalanced and the only decision was between the ratio of increased taxes and decreased spending.
you make a very good argument against spending cuts and VAT increase but what would you have liked to see? baring in mind that the rich are always the ones that really have the power in the world, always have and probably always will...
The Lib Dems may have negotiated some concessions, but I still feel this is a regressive budget.
The Tories made sure capital gains tax was not raised too high. Raising this to say 40% would have been a much fairer way of raising revenue without hitting the poorest.
Although VAT is not on food it is still on clothing and household essentials. Those on lower incomes cannot avoid paying this.
The married couple tax allowance is a completely unnecessary tax break. Single people and single parent families have more household overheads than married couples. This useless tax is just outdated Tory moralising.
The defence budget could afford to be cut by a large portion. Afghanistan is not winnable and we do not need Trident.
Finally, the banks have got off too lightly. They are the main cause of the huge deficit, and they should have to take on a much larger burden.
well I do agree that VAT increase is unfair, but I thought it would be a bigger hit then it was.
I agreed with the hit on housing benefit because landlords will simply have to accept less rent for their properties, rather than having people evicted and getting no income they will accept lower rents. I doubt this was the intention but it is effectively a hit for the rich not the poor.
as for trident I totally agree, we can even make a sound economic argument to the rich against keeping trident, and that is that to use our nukes we would have to seek permission from the US, so why have them, if needed (and I think they aren't needed) we could use america's nukes. I'm making an argument to the rich here, not on a moral basis at all.
As for Afghan, I don't know why we are there exactly. I suspect its for economic interests of some sort and we will be there until we get whatever it is we are there for. We may pull out and even say we lost, but I will look to see what we (or anyone) ends up gaining for that adventure. Hate to sound fatalistic but I feel ordinary folk are not going to have a say on this one, so we will stay.
As for the banks, well I just think we share responsibility for the crisis. Nobody put a gun to someones head and forced them to borrow money they could not afford to pay back. The banks shouldn't have loaned it but we shouldn't have borrowed.
but i do see your points, and like your blog.
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