George Osborne Is A Riot 4 Austerity: All Views On Government’s Spending Cuts
GEORGE Osborne’s spending review is making headlines. Here’s what the experts and papers are saying:
The Green Dream Made Real
Time and again, liberal thinkers have told us that we must learn to live with less “stuff”, for the sake of our own sanity and for the good of the people-plagued planet. So don’t be fooled by their crocodile tears today – they laid the cultural foundation stones for this age of hardship.
These austerity hypocrites have short memories. This week, the Guardian’s George Monbiot wrote an angry piece about the Tory-led cuts agenda, claiming that it will help the rich and hurt the rest.
“When we stagger out of our shelters to assess the damage, we’ll discover that we have emerged into a different world, run for their benefit, not ours”, he said.
This is the same Monbiot who wrote a piece in 2007 titled ‘Bring on the recession’.
“I hope that the recession now being forecast by some economists materialises”, he said, because only a recession could give us “the time we need to prevent runaway climate change”.
A recession would hurt poor people, he acknowledged – but that was a price worth paying to halt out-of-control economic growth.
Inspired by Monbiot, in 2008 some deep greens kick-started a campaign called Riot 4 Austerity – which says it all. – Brendan O’Neill
Al Qaeda Dunnit
Al Qaeda have this morning issued a new video in which they claim full responsibility for the devastating Spending Review which rocked the UK yesterday.
The video, which appears to have been put together in something of a hurry, shows several Al Qadea members reading from a list of measures they have claim to have imposed on the UK in a concerted attack on Western imperialism. – News Arse
The Worse Off Are…
However the Institute for Fiscal Studies has told Sky News the spending plans are “regressive” and a chart on page 98 of the official document reveals the bottom 10% of earners will lose the most money from the cuts.
Acting director Carl Emmerson said: “The Treasury’s own figures show the benefit cuts announced today will affect the bottom half more than the top half.
“The cuts to public sector spending will also affect the poorest half rather than the top half. Therefore, everything we have heard about so far indicates the measures are regressive.” – Sky News
Middle Is The New Lower
Households on incomes of £48,700 or more will lose an average of £10,000 during four years of austerity as the Coalition battles to wipe out an unprecedented budget deficit. – Mail
We Are Doomed!
The Chancellor of the Exchequer is taking people for fools if he believes the country will buy his spin that the deepest spending cuts in living memory are fair and unavoidable.
There’s nothing fair about hitting the least well-off hardest, persecuting the sick for being ill and the jobless for losing their jobs.
And there’s nothing unavoidable about ideologically-driven cuts which risk plunging Britain into a second recession. – Mirror
We Win!
In fact, Osborne’s declared road to fiscal sanity has already paid firm dividends in the drop in cost of government borrowing and enough economic confidence to see the creation of some 330,000 jobs this year so far. And the OBR forecasts that the private sector will create three jobs for every one cut in the private sector. – Fraser Nelson
The Plot
Shadow Chancellor Alan Johnson warned the cuts announced in the Comprehensive Spending Review could end up “stifling“ the economic recovery…
For some on the Government benches it was an “ideological objective,” he claimed.
The shadow chancellor acknowledged the “deficit has to be paid down” but said: “Today’s reckless gamble with people’s livelihoods runs the risk of stifling the fragile recovery.” – NeBusiness
George Knows
The back pocket has a history, of course. In his splendid The New MachiavelliJonathan Powell describes how Gordon Brown would also hold back a ‘hidden surprise’ in his Budgets designed to guarantee him Labour cheers when he sat down. “We knew Gordon would have ‘a back pocket’ to pay for that surprise somewhere within the spending limits, and Tony’s constant quest was to find it first and spend it on something else…We got so desperate in 2004 to find out what Gordon was up to that we refused to set a date for the spending round until he would tell us the content.” – Benedict Brogan
More views and news to follow…
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Posted: 21st, October 2010 | In: Politicians Comments (5) | TrackBack | Permalink
