The FT has launched an Austerity Audit today. The first part of the summary of its findings is stark:
Cuts to welfare payments will hit the local economies of northern towns and cities as much as five times as hard as the Conservative heartland southern counties, according to research commissioned by the Financial Times into the impact of austerity.
The government's radical reform programme, aimed at reducing one of the largest fiscal deficits among OECD nations by moving people off the benefit rolls and into work, is taking £19bn a year out of working-age social security between now and 2015.
The Tories say the welfare cuts will spur the private sector to greater dynamism on the back of an expanded labour force. Three years after the policy was unveiled, the CBI employers' organisation continues to endorse it while cautioning of the risks for hard-pressed families.
But as the government considers further deep welfare cuts in the June spending round, the FT's research underlines the potential risks to economic regeneration and private sector business prospects in poorer areas where the local population faces the loss of a large slice of purchasing power.
The findings of the FT's investigation — the first to examine the local economic and business consequences of the reforms — suggest any impact will be most acute in areas outside Tory strongholds.
In summary, this is an unbalanced attack on the poor that will cause considerable harm, increase inequality and fail to achieve any recognised economic objective.
To put it another way, this is class warfare by the rich on the poor.
The Tories like to talk of the politics of envy, although they do not know what they're talking about. But in fairness, and objectively, we can say they purse the politics of hatred. And that really worries me.
Thanks for reading this post.
You can share this post on social media of your choice by clicking these icons:
You can subscribe to this blog's daily email here.
And if you would like to support this blog you can, here:
So reduced fiscal transfers in a notionally unified currency area.
Sounds familiar…
As I’ve said before, their only interest is underlining and reinforcing the privilege which has put such unlikely people as Cameron and Osborne in positions of authority in the first place. Dave wants to keep the claret flowing and he knows the only way to do that is to relentlessly attack everyone poorer than him to keep them down. Take away education, time, money, health care, adequate nutrition etc and the competition (that’s thee and me) will never get off the ground. That’s their aim. We should expect nothing else.
Then they underestimate people. Great politicians of the Left rose from deprived backgrounds. The next Aneurin Bevan will come.
I’m hit by the bedroom tax (because my son’s room is deemed ‘spare’) so that’s £58 a month gone for me. I will now have to cut back appropriately so that’s £56 from local shops. I’ve cut my weekly shop down, stopped buying coffee and have gone onto a vegetarian diet for myself. I might lose weight, but that’s not the point! With so little money circulating more local businesses will close though the local foodbanks are thriving.
As regards the politics of envy, a bizarre thing has happened -it is now the low paid who are ‘envying’ those on benefits! Aided and abetted by some of the most scurrilous misuse of language by a Government scraping the barrel the working poor are no ‘envying’ and turning their ire towards the disabled. What!
The local foodbank in Dunfermline is rationed!
I can’t see what’s wrong in principle with a bedroom tax. If you think people living in taxpayer subsidised houses can have spare bedroom, then why not everyone? I live in a small terraced house which I own, but don’t have a spare bedroom (like quite a few in my street). Those who oppose the bedroom tax need to tell us how their “subsidised spare bedroom for everyone” scheme is going to work.
In fact therein lies one of the problems with having the state provide too much. We get bogged down in interminable arguments as to who is entitled to how much bedroom space, how many tins of baked beans, central heating, etc. The social security system is of Byzantine complexity as you may have noticed.
Let’s start with the fact that the single bedroom properties people are meant to move to don’t, by and large, exist, shall we?
Your logic is just wrong
It’s dogma over reality
I only hope you are not unfortunate ebough to find yourself on hard times and find yourself in need of help. No doubt, if that were to happen, the term “scrounger” would indoubtedly not apply to you.
I love your Orwellian “subsidised spare bedroom for everyone” crack! It assumes the majority of those on Housing Senefit have never once paid income tax or national insurance contributions in their lives. That is why people pay into the system; to provide a safety net if they happen to fall on hard times such as unemployment or sickness. So many are simply getting back what they have put in!
The tax makes no economic sense either. It would cost more to evict tenants than to charge this tax.
It is pure spite! Nothing more!
Well what a shock….
Cutting public expenditure has the greatest effect in poor areas and as most of those are in the North then this area will be effected worse.
What next…..
Cutting fishing quotas will have the greatest effect on those areas with fishing industries which tend to be on the coast.
Or even…….
Placing financial restrictions will have the greatest effect on areas in which financial companies are based which happen to be in London.
The North was always going to suffer from cuts in expenditure whether Labour put them in place or the Coalition, your looking for evil intent is just point scoring!
Thanks for your callousness
Next time you visit I’ll be hitting the spam button
Hear, hear.
What’s missing from your statement is value. It’s just a recital of political game plan. Even on your terms, Labour wouldn’t alienate their base in the way you suggest. But you’re spot on about the Tories being callous and cynical.
Richard, Sadly your comments are not in the least helpful and are indicative of a version of capitalism red in tooth and claw, which has no place in 21st century civilised society, but belong perhaps in 5th century BC Sparta!
Good point Richard. The geographical location of those affected by a change in social security is less important than the fairness or otherwise of those changes. If there are geographical locations particularly hard hit, then the LOGICAL way of dealing with that is via regional economic policy measures. Though whether the latter policies are up to the job is another matter.
Simon, I have great sympathy with your plight and will go on with my small voice against this vile government until they are, or I am, gone. The greatest tragedy is that, working upwards, the disabled have been blamed and punished and then the unemployed. But from the working poor on upwards, each group shows a propensity to fall for the odious propaganda that falls from the mouths of Duncan-Smith and his condescending ilk. Why do so few of these people understand that the process can be complete only when they too have been thoroughly pauperised for the benefit of their “superiors”, the 99%? And why won’t the Labour Party tell them?
The more you look at this government, the more apparent it is that the most appropriate slogan for them is ‘forward to the 1930’s with the coalition’. Getting rid of the welfare state and the NHS, responding to a financial collapse with austerity, and the use of scapegoating and dehumanization of the poor and disabled with lies and propoganda Goebbels would have proud of.
Spot on! I’ll post this!
Agreed, the wealthy vested interests in the UK have almost achieved the full implementation of their plan.
If this coalition were really serious about tackling the deficit, they would have done it by now.
Incidently, how is giving the rich a £3 billion tax cut by taking the money from freezing (cutting) benefits, taking money out of the pockets of people who have little enough already, supposed to get the economy moving? How is a freeze on public sector pay, pension rises and wage rises tied to CPI rather than RPI inflation, the bedroom tax and 20% VAT supposes to get people spending and getting the economy moving again?
A modest 0.25% tax on financial transactions could raise up to £20 billion a year A tax on the very richest of 3% could raise £90 billion a year. If corporations were forced to pay their fair share of tax, a whopping £120 billion could be raised annually.Without having to borrow, up to £230 billion a year could possibly be raised.
Of course, the austerity measures are increasing, not decreasing the debt. The austerity measures are merely a fig leaf in order to destroy and privatise the best parts of the NHS and the welfare state. They want to sell off as much of state assets as possible to the private sector and their mates in the city of London.
They appear to have closed off any method whatsover of getting the economy moving and genuinely tackling the deficit, which leads me to the conclusion that they don’t care about the deficit.
On the contrary, the deficit is providing the perfect cover to do what they want to do!
Incidently, how is giving the rich a £3 billion tax cut by taking the money from freezing (cutting) benefits, taking money out of the pockets of people who have little enough already, supposed to get the economy moving? ……………..
By trickle down of course…Oh trickle down hasn’t worked in a thousand years or more.
What!!? Thatcher’s funeral paid by us and administered by the craven C of E with no qualms??????? The bill will be revealed to us afterwards? Have the minds of the the British public is now like putty in the hands of these people. What? the Thatcher family with its dubious millions not paying for it. What sort of cosmic joke is this????