Sunday 13 March 2016

More Austerity Heading Our Way

The saying used to be jam tomorrow which means the Government will hand you bread and water today so they make the harsh decisions now to ensure better things tomorrow but the Government are not even promising that anymore, just further austerity cuts so it's bread and water tomorrow as well.
George Osborne is to announce a further £4bn of spending cuts in this weeks Budget, saying that they are necessary to keep his fiscal plan on course, and enable him to continue to hit a Budget surplus in the final year of this Parliament.
As we have faced austerity cuts across the board since 2010, austerity cuts that were said to be a necessary measure to clear the debt by 2015, we are justified in saying how come we are STILL having austerity foisted upon us six years later?
How can we still be in the red after losing 5,870 NHS nurses, 7,968 hospital beds, a third of ambulance stations, 5,362 firefighters, 6,800 police officers, 350 youth centers, 2,000 youth workers, 200,000 civil servants, 4 prisons, 57 hospitals, 66 Accident & Emergency wards, 100 swimming pools and 5,000 teachers.
VAT has been raised from 17.5% to 20%, child benefit has been stopped for higher earners, £82m cut from children’s centers, Education Maintenance Allowance has been ceased for students, disability allowance reduced, train tickets increased by 20% and over 500 library closed.
For all those 'savings', 300,000 more children in poverty year on year, 48% working of 20 to 34 year old live with their parents as they can’t afford to rent or buy their own home, pay freeze for civil and public servants, the largest fall in wages in the EU since the 2008 recession, 2 million on zero hours contracts, six million families in fuel poverty, 400,000 more working people claiming housing benefit every year, the lowest health care spending of the G7 nations and record breaking number
of food banks and food bank customers.
All that and not counting the continued attempts to reduce Tax Credits which top up the wages of those on low wages.
The figures from HM Treasury shows The UK Nation Debt in 2010 was £0.76 trillion and today we owe £1.36 trillion.
Now i don't make any claims to be an economist but to me that seems that we owe almost twice as much as we did after Dave and George got their grubby little hands on the economy.
Whatever the Conservatives are doing, it isn't working but as we will find out this week, the massive austerity cuts have not worked so far so the Conservatives seem to think that the obvious answer must be to cut even deeper and harder.
It is going to get messy especially as the Conservatives have at least another 4 years in office to push their punishing, horrific right wing agenda but with nowhere left to cut, it will be interesting to see where they feel they can force deeper cuts.

3 comments:

Liber - Latin for "The Free One" said...
This comment has been removed by the author.
Falling on a bruise said...

Seems they think the answer is to keep doing what they have done previously that hasn't worked and do it even more than before. Obviously not enough austerity so let's heap some more upon the poor sods, they haven't squeaked yet!

Liber - Latin for "The Free One" said...
This comment has been removed by the author.