Posted in Public services

4000 UK Uncut members in mass civil disobedience tomorrow in central London

UKUNCUTUK Uncut is planning a spectacular act of mass disobedience opposing austerity in central London tomorrow, with over 4,000 people expected to attend. Precise details of the action are being kept under wraps, but the group has promised bold, exciting and creative direct action at a prominent location. Protests are also being held in a number of cities and towns across the country, including Gloucester, Nottingham and Newcastle.

The protest follows the Queen’s Speech on Thursday, in which the Queen announced the government’s commitment to harsh austerity measures, including removing the social security for Britain’s poorest families. Continue reading →

Osborne has as much chance of a budget surplus in 2018 as of the Titanic resurfacing

Osborne Liar LiarOsborne is telling another of his wheezing yarns which he’s much better at than solving real problems. His first yarn in 2010 was that he would eliminate the structural deficit by 2015; it turns out that it is currently £92bn. His next yarn today is that he will now eliminate it by 2017-8. Fat chance. His own figures tell an utterly different tale. Continue reading →

If Osborne cuts £30bn as promised, he can’t achieve his deficit reduction targets

scissorsOsborne is now mooting an emergency budget within the next few weeks to lay the foundations for the £30bn fiscal consolidation (aka cuts) to be announced in the autumn spending review. It is made up of £12bn welfare cuts, £13bn reductions in departmental expenditure (aka cuts in public services), and £5bn in tax avoidance measures. What is not immediately apparent is that, if the NHS, schools and overseas aid budgets continue to be ring-fenced, the cutbacks in unprotected and sensitive expenditure like defence and the police will have to be as high as 18%. Continue reading →

There are 3 ways to cut the deficit – why has Labour chosen the wrong one?

scissorsThe budget deficit, which has been far more central to this election campaign than it should have been, can be dealt with in three separate ways. It can be reduced by cutting net expenditure either by taxing the poor or by taxing the rich, or it can be reduced by cutting unemployment (the ‘automatic stabilisers’ to sustain the jobless cost £9bn a year per million persons unemployed), growing the economy, raising wages and thus increasing government revenues to pay off the deficit faster. Continue reading →

Tories make tenants and homeless pay for social housing give away as election bribe

Money-on-a-plateThe desperate search for shrinking votes has pushed Iain Duncan Smith into yet another spectacular own goal. His latest pet idea is to extend the Right to Buy to Britain’s 2.5m housing association tenants. However, whilst social homes are owned by Councils, this latest Tory brainwave means selling off housing association assets which are private property because housing associations are independent charities so that their £65bn in borrowing is securely off the public accounts. But as Osborne must know only too well, compelling housing associations to sell to tenants using the same Right to Buy discounts enjoyed by Council tenants (up to £102,000 in London and £77,000 elsewhere) would cost serious amounts of taxpayer money and bankrupt some housing associations. This is yet another unfunded Tory commitment. Continue reading →