(no subject)
Some political things that are on my mind atm
Surely if the aim is to get people off benefits and into work and to "make work pay" the best way of doing so is actually increasing the minimum wage to a "living wage" standard and cracking down on those employers who still offer sub-minimum wage rates of pay or those who only pay for a set amount of hours but expect a job to be finished and you to work unpaid overtime, rather than cracking down on benefits which are often hard to get by on at all for most people. yes I'm against freeloaders in the benefits system but I don't think that punishing legitimate cases on benefits with a 10% reduction in Housing benefit for every year on it without employment is the solution, increasing the incentives to work from the pay side as well as reducing the cut off of benefits to workers is the way forwards
I intensely dislike the Tory (and there are blue and yellow tories now) assertation that the deficit is down to Labour government profligacy and sprinkling the money out when there was nothing to back it up. All of their narrative completely blanks out the global financial crisis which was the fault of the banks and a monetary policy that they supported (and thought wasn't lax enough) which the previous government had to rescue the country from, Osbournes opposition plan to this was the same as Ireland's which hasn't worked (and is the one he's now implementing). The issue isn't just that they paid out a lot to save the rich bankers to stop the country going down the shitter completely, its also that our tax income has dropped considerably from what it was forecast at, and you can't then cut back to the new level straight away as that makes the situation worse.
And on the back of this the idea that we have to deal with the deficit now, and that budgetary cuts are the only wayto do so. There are other ways. Better promotion of economic growth will build a sustainable growth pattern which will in turn increase the returns the treasury gets on taxes.
Running inflation at just 1% above the 2% target would also half the deficit in ten years, which wouldn't be to bad so long as take home pay and wage increases (plus minimum wage and benefits) kept in step to it.
Even end loading or spreading of cuts would be better than the current situation which is A) ideological and B) pure electoral politics - as they have front loaded all the cuts so they come in quickly and in a big swing, which makes the impact worse now but likely to have been forgotten by 2015 unless they screw up
Lastly the Britain gives billions to Irish bail out thing - actually I agree that we should be doing this but.. I find it galling that Osbourne is willing to give say 7bn quid to Irish banks (and from there pretty much to support the loans they've got from british banks - so its our fat cat rich who cash in really) when he's cutting what 19bn? or so from the benefits budget here and thus saying sod the poor but you tax payers can pay for my rich mates to get richer.
I agree it needs to be doneto stop a second wave of banking and credit crisis spreading but.. doing this whilst squeezing the poor and pretty much leaving bankers and other rich businesses free to operate in the same fashion as caused the crisis, and not getting our money back from them? That is more than annoying.
But hey Wills and Kate are getting married next year, hopefully its because she's got a bun in the oven and they need some shotgun wedding type stuff - hopefully the bill for policing and clean up doesn't fall on the tax payer but on the royals as well.