You can always trust Britain’s pampered corporate bosses to express their greed at the most inauspicious moments, but to do so when Osborne is set for the most inequality-expanding budget in living memory at the expense of the poor is insensitive even by their standards. The heads of Britain’s biggest companies already make more in a day than a worker on the minimum wage in a year. Yet now they’re demanding 20-30% increases in their basic pay because the EU has placed a cap on bonuses at 200% of the basic salary. They also object to bonuses being withheld for longer periods (3 or 5 years) as a check that the bonus was properly earned and not just a device for topping up basic pay. Continue reading
Tagged with Welfare Cuts
Child poverty could be Tories’ Achilles heel
The Tories’ relief that the child poverty figures just published in the official Households Below Average Income (HBAI) statistics didn’t show an increase was palpable. But that conceals the real story. The Tories have form on this issue. Child poverty tripled under Thatcher from 1 in 9 children to 1 in 3, but then fell by 800,000 under Labour after 1997. Unexpectedly this trend continued initially under Cameron with a fall to 2.3 million in 2010-11 because middle class earnings declined (so that the threshold of 60% of average earnings dipped a bit) while benefits protected the poorest. However that easing of the child poverty stigma has now come firmly to an end as a result of the housing benefit cap, the bedroom tax and the 1% cap on benefit increases. Indeed it is now forecast, particularly if the new round of £12bn cuts is launched in the budget, that child poverty will have increased by one-third to 1 in 4 children by 2020.
Even that is not the full story. In Opposition Cameron pledged to end the ‘moral disgrace’ of poverty. He went further in 2006: “the Conservative party recognises, will measure and will act on relative poverty……Even if we are not destitute, we still experience poverty if we cannot afford things that society regards as essential”. Contrast that with the Tory reaction when they believed just before the HBAI statistics were published that the child poverty figures had increased. Were they going to ‘act on relative poverty’ to deal with a worsening situation? No, they were going to move the goal-posts so that nothing need be done. They were going to change the definition of poverty to take account of entrenched worklessness, family breakdown, problem debt, and alcohol and drug dependency – anything except a lack of money. Continue reading
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Another hit for low-paid workers revealed – one of Osborne’s £12bn hidden benefit cuts
Following my post on the further £12bn welfare cuts promised by Osborne if the Tories win, I received an email from one of those persons who read it, Sue Tuke, with some devastating new revelations about how the proposed cuts to Universal Credit when self-employed claimants miss their monthly targets will likely be part of the hidden benefit cuts not yet announced. She said she felt strongly that people should be warned about this, and I agree. I am therefore setting out what she, and I, believe is likely to happen, and I am indebted to her for bringing this to my attention. Continue reading
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Why we should say NO to welfare cuts in the next Parliament
There is an auction taking place on the size of the welfare cuts to be imposed in the next 5 years. The Tories are arguing for £30bn cuts in the first 2 years to 2017-8 via no tax rises, £12bn in welfare cuts, £5bn in extra corporate tax evasion revenues, and bigger departmental cuts (up to £17bn). The LibDems accept the overall £30bn target set by the Tories, but propose to reach it by £6bn in higher taxes, £6bn by clamping down on corporate tax evasion, £12bn in departmental cuts, and £3.5bn in welfare cuts. The Labour party has not explained in detail how it would reach its target of eliminating the structural deficit by 2019-20, though the cuts would be less than under the Tories and confined to current expenditure, not capital expenditure. Nobody is saying that there should be no welfare cuts in the next 5 years. But they should be, for several strong reasons. Continue reading
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A budget surplus, George? Don’t make me laugh
Osborne’s proposed goal of a budget surplus in the next parliament is absurd on several counts.
First, the politics of austerity for a full decade 2010-20 is surely untenable. The unrest after just 3 years is already clearly mounting, and the idea that the lid could be held down for another 7 years is fanciful, especially since any further additional departmental or welfare cuts earmarked to be made during 2015-20 will be much harder to implement once the earlier reductions have been pocketed.
Second, the plan is utterly dependent not only on securing those cuts, but also on achieving a long period of high growth. But where is that growth engine to come from, when investment has crashed and is shockingly low, wages are still falling, exports are stymied, and the eurozone is deeply troubled? Continue reading
