| The Axe falls over Britain........cuts in public spending. | for everyone |
Does any one actually care what is happening in this country today??Has anyone thought about the effect these spending cuts will have on the poorest people? Seems not, most people are too busy moralising about the ‘scroungers’ and benefit fraud and congratulating themselves on electing a government who is going to ‘crack down on cheats’.
Well here’s another way of looking at it, think about these statistics taken from the governments own statistics website;
http://www.statistics.gov.uk/
01% population own 21% of wealth
05% population own 40% of wealth
10% population own 53% of wealth
25% population own 72% of wealth
50% population own 93% of wealth. And then consider this; THE POOREST 50% OF POPULATION SHARE ONLY 7% OF THE WEALTH
AND IT’S THOSE 50% OF POPULATION WHO OWN ONLY 7% OF THE WEALTH WHO ARE BEING TARGETED BY THE MASSIVE PUBLIC SPENDING CUTS. Undoubtedly some of 50% of the population (who own only 7% of the wealth) ARE actually defrauding the system. BUT………….what they gain still doesn’t take them out of the poorest wealth owning group. The amounts they are defrauding the system is PEANUTS compared to the vast wealth held in the hands of the few. One of the worse aspects of this whole scenario is the determination of our government to return to the Victorian distinctions between the ‘deserving poor’ and the ‘undeserving poor’, our society left these attitudes behind 150 years ago and now we are being driven back there.
SO………..my question to our government and to those who support them is. Alongside these savage cuts, what are you going to do to ensure a more egalitarian society and a better distribution of wealth? AND………if the poor are going to have to sacrifice so much, where are the plans to claw back some of the deficit from the rich?
The government is not targeting the rich; they are targeting, specifically, the disabled;
http://www.heraldscotland.com/news/politics/postcards-from-the-edge-1.1062035##
Analysis: Tom Gordon,
Scottish Political Editor
17 Oct 2010
After months of speculation, the Chancellor will finally rise in the Commons this week to announce the Coalition’s Spending Review, lifting the lid on a Pandora’s box of brutal cuts unlike any seen in Britain since the 1920s…………………………………….
Already we know some £66bn will be cut from public services by 2016, and around £20bn extra raised in tax. It will be an unprecedented upheaval that will leave few untouched.
The recent furore over changes to child benefit revolved around savings of just £1bn. To find the other £65bn, Osborne will need to bulldoze the public sector landscape.
Swathes of benefits will be cut, new charges such as tuition fees imposed, quangos ignited, funding for beloved institutions slashed, the military shrunk, and thousands of public-sector jobs lost, with inevitable knock-on effects for the rest of the economy.
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/newstopics/politics/8068568/Spending-review-To-cut-with-principle-is-the-right-approach.html
Some of the biggest cuts are going to be to the welfare budget. It has already been announced that child benefit will cease to be universal. The benefit will no longer be paid for any child over 16. There will be a radical shake-up of social housing, including an end to the right to stay in the same council house for life.
The guiding principle behind them seems to be the reintroduction of the distinction between the “deserving” and the “undeserving” poor. The Coalition is going to target Disability Allowance: the aim is to force 400,000 of those claiming that benefit back into paid employment.
http://www.egovmonitor.com/node/38941
The Government’s proposed welfare reforms will see 3.5 million disabled people lose over £9.2 billion of critical support by 2015 pushing them further into poverty and closer to the fringes of society, according to "Destination Unknown" - a new report published by the think tank Demos.
Plans to move disabled people onto Job Seekers Allowance will account for half (£4.87 billion) of these losses.
Although actual spending cut details would only be available after the government publishes its spending review later on this month, based on government announcements until now, Demos has calculated that:
• Families with disabled children to lose over £3,000 each by 2015
* Couples where one partner acts as a carer to their disabled partner will lose more than £3,000 as a couple each by 2015
* Individuals moved from Incapacity Benefit to Job Seekers Allowance will lose nearly £9,000 each by 2015
http://www.ft.com/cms/s/0/4e7946a2-d2ff-11df-9ae9-00144feabdc0.html
People with disabilities will have lost a total of more than £9bn in income by the end of this parliament, even ahead of any further benefit cuts in the spending review, according to Demos, the think-tank, and Scope, the disabled people’s charity.
The loss of income – which adds up to more than £3,000 by 2015 for some families – is the result of the benefit cuts already made in the Budget, plus plans to move existing claimants on incapacity benefit to either the new employment and support allowance, or jobseeker’s allowance, which requires them to look for work.
http://www.guardian.co.uk/politics/2010/oct/17/george-osborne-spending-review-cuts
Osborne is expected to outline £83bn of cuts, the most drastic reductions in state spending since the second world war. The detailed impact of the cuts became clearer today as the Observer revealed reductions of around 30% to the justice system, involving cuts to the legal aid budget and the closure of 150 courts.
19 Comments
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forgetmenot525 wrote on Oct 19, '10
lol................ahhh ....you mean the great 'reds under the beds' syndrome :-)
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We
did have the bloody Civil War on our land - deaths from this war
exceeded deaths from all our other wars put together. But by the nature
of it being a "civil" war, the destruction and aftermath was different
from what Britain experienced at the end of WW2. All of Europe
struggled to recover from WW2, the US swaggered about, our power and
wealth enhanced, our people confident that they could accomplish
anything.
And you are right, to the average American of today, war indeed is something that happens somewhere else. |
forgetmenot525 wrote on Oct 19, '10
bennett1 said
 There
are so many differences in our 2 countries!! The amount of land
available, the histories, the acceptance of a government role in our
lives. 
I've
been thinking about this and ... I think one of the reasons for this
'difference' is that you have never experienced war on your own land. To
the average American war is something that happens somewhere else.
There have ben so many wars in Europe and in every instance there are
'post war' changes that bring about different attitudes. One of the most
famous political sayings is the ''homes fit for heroes' quote.
''The close of the war also brought a new social attitude that focused the Government’s attention on a national responsibility to provide homes, giving rise to Lloyd George's famous promise of 'homes fit for heroes' referring to the many soldiers returning from the war''....................read more http://environment.uwe.ac.uk/video/cd_new_demo/Conweb/house_ages/council_housing/print.htm |
OMG,
Loretta, that was fascinating!! I am learning so much. Interesting 1)
the effects of the bombing of WW2 and 2) the Thatcher "Right to Buy"
plan. There are so many differences in our 2 countries!! The amount of
land available, the histories, the acceptance of a government role in
our lives.
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forgetmenot525 wrote on Oct 18, '10
There
was a massive post war building programme aimed at providing good
quality affordable social housing. Building the houses created work for
returning servicemen and the houses replaced the thousands of homes lost
in the blitz. have you read this ? pretty basic but accurate
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Council_house ''In the immediate post-War years, and well into the 1950s, council house provision was shaped by the New Towns Act 1946 and the Town and Country Planning Act 1947. Houses were typically semi-detached or in small terraces. A three-bedroom semi-detached council house was typically built on a square grid 7 yards (21 feet (6.4 m)) on the side, with a maximum density of no more than 12 houses per acre (30 houses per hectare; around 337 m² per house), meaning that most houses had generous space around them. The new towns and many existing towns had countless estates built to this basic model. For many working class people, this housing model provided the first experience of private garden space (usually front and rear), as well as the first private and indoor toilets and bathrooms, with hot running water. The quality of these houses, and in particular the existence of small gardens, compared very favourably with social housing being built on the European continent in this period.''................................read more http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Council_house |
forgetmenot525 wrote on Oct 18, '10
maybe
you are right Doug, whoever formed this government would have needed to
find money from somewhere but a labour government would have been more
likely to tax higher earners and less likely to cut benefits. The
conservatives want a society with less welfare benefits and more means
testing, this is their traditional and historic stance on the subject
and to some extent the present economic situation has allowed them to
implement policy that they have wanted to implement for years. It is
only our present economic situation that enables them to make these cuts
with the backing of the public, in any other economic situation, they
would not get this amount of public support. And to blame the 'previous'
government for the national debt is being a little 'creative' with the
truth. The huge debt was caused in part by the world recession,
financing wars and the collapse of the banks. These things would have
happened regardless of which political party was in power and these
things would have led to us being in debt. I just think we need to be
very careful what we allow and we need our politicians to look at the
inequality of wealth distribution when deciding the fairest way of
repaying some of this debt.
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While
I agree that the rich should be targeted more, I disagree that the cuts
are solely a Conservative action. Did anyone think that these cuts
would not happen if (perish the thought) Labour had been re-elected?
Labour wouldn't be as open about targeting Education, NHS and benefits, but you can bet they'd have done it through the back door. |
brendainmad wrote on Oct 18, '10
The rich just keep getting richer and the poorer keep getting poorer.
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forgetmenot525 said
there
are not many politically interested people around who actually remember
the changes Maggie Thatcher made and the misery she inflicted on
ordinary peoples lives. I think its about to happen all over again.
Yes,
it is about to happen all over again. But at least you are a nation
that has a foundation of social services. We do not. Maggie Thatcher
was a good friend of our Ronnie Raygun, who gutted our unions and turned
us against the poor.
Many prisons in our country are privatized and run for profit. |
forgetmenot525 wrote on Oct 17, '10
bennett1 said
There
was no government assistance available to her (because she could not
establish proof of permanent residency) and finally a woman's charity
was able to find her a temporary spot.
OMG..............that's horrible Bennett, si glad she was found and taken care of.
I know you are right, there is less assistance there and the inequality is more marked than it is here. but if people don't wake up and understand what is happening we could be in the same position. I've read that another of their money saving ideas is to sell the prisons !!...........that has not actually been decided but it was up for discussion. Sometimes peoples stupidity utterly infuriates me. We have a massive national debt (again not proportionally as big as yours but that's not the point) and because of this the present government were able to blame the labour party for mismanaging the economy when they were in power. They misled the people , the debt was mostly the result of the world recession and the banking crisis. Yes the previous government could have done some things differently but on the whole the huge debt would have been there regardless of who was in power. The present situation has given the conservative government exactly the sort of opportunity the have always wanted and a bloody good excuse to drastically reduce welfare spending. Why are people so dam stupid!?? The government is successfully turning the poor against the poor by pointing the finger and making a lot of noise about benefit fraud and cheats. The real fraud in this country is the massive inequality which every one seems quite happy to live with. I think another problem is that there are not many politically interested people around who actually remember the changes Maggie Thatcher made and the misery she inflicted on ordinary peoples lives. I think its about to happen all over again. |
I
am sure you know where I am on this. Our President Obama suggested
that people making over $250,000 a year (£156,325) should pay more taxes
to help in our country and for this he was called a Socialist, and a
Nazi, and people marched in the thousands in their putrid "Tea Party"
get-ups to call for the abolishment of his government.
These people call themselves Christian. I could go on and on but we agree in all except that many of the programs are being cut in the UK have either never existed in the US or were cut many years ago. This week in my small town a 68-year-old woman was found living in a storage container. There was no government assistance available to her (because she could not establish proof of permanent residency) and finally a woman's charity was able to find her a temporary spot. |
forgetmenot525 wrote on Oct 17, '10
I'm
pretty sure our head teacher said the budgets have been cut by
25%...........its a hell of a cut, I'm in Scotland so our systems are
not the same and I think it was the departmental budgets that were cut
not the staffing, building etc. Also I think this was done by the local
authority not central government. Education is devolved and comes under
Holyrood not Westminster so our schools will not be directly affected. .
..................actually I'm not at all sure about the cuts but I
intend to find out. I go back to work tomorrow after the October
holidays so should find out a bit more.
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It
looks pretty bad. I didn't vote for them and I just hope some of the
lib dems start to wake up to what is happening and bring this coalition
down. I'm waiting on the announcements - it seems education might not
get hit as badly as other areas but I still don't look forward to
preparing a budget for next year.
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