George
Osborne came down hard on those people who are unable to work through
disability, as well as those low income earners who struggle to
survive on low incomes.
The child benefit cuts announced at the Tory party conference have
been confirmed. If both parents earn less than £44,000 a year,
they will continue to receive child benefit. But families with one
main earner on more than £44,000 will see their benefit stopped.
A married couple with 3 children and one parent working and earning
just over the £44,000 limit, will lose there benefit. A married
couple with 1 child and both parents earning £40,000, a total
of £80,000 will keep their child benefit. That is obviously
fair. Over the next 4 years the tax threshold for high earners is
to be reduced to £39,000 meaning more people will lose their
child benefit.
People on ‘Incapacity Benefit’,
that is people who are disabled or have an illness which limits
their ability to work, are going to have their benefits changed
to an ‘Employment and Support Allowance’ which will
be limited to 1 year, for those who are able to do some work, and
whose payments are based on their National Insurance Contributions.
What is the definition of ‘Some work’? You could argue
that someone with no legs, heart disease, breathing difficulties,
only one eye, and only one finger on each hand is capable of working.
What this government doesn’t realise or even care about, is
that a lot of people on incapacity benefit would like to work, apart
from the fact there are precious few jobs, even for able bodied
people, most employers cannot afford to specially adapt buildings
and equipment to give these incapacitated people the dignity of
a job. Being trapped in your own home every single day, is not being
lazy and sponging off other people, it is lonely, depressing and
degrading.
For those people living in care homes that currently enjoy the Mobility
element of their disability living allowance, will lose the mobility
allowance.
Working families, who currently get 80% of their child care paid
to enable them to work, will have the allowance reduced to 70%.
Local councils who have been subjected to cuts over the last few
years will face a further 28% cut over the next 4 years, with expected
job losses of 500,000 in this sector.
The police are facing cuts of around 25%, but this is expected to
be reduced by grants from local councils. The number of job losses
is expected to be substantial.
Jon Snow of channel 4 news quotes in his blog. “When it comes
to military procurement, Israel spends £9 billion a year and
administers its purchases with 400 people. Britain spends £10
billion annually on procurement and has a staff of 23,700 to do
it. The Secretary of State for Defence is getting rid of 25,000
jobs at the MOD. But when I pressed him last night on Channel 4
News, there was no clear sense that the vast majority of those redundancies
will be in procurement. Indeed my analyst told me that the main
MOD headquarters will bear the brunt”. It’s
still jobs for the boys while the country suffers.
If Israel can manage on 400 staff, it would appear we could as well,
then we could make better use of the 23,300 tea and coffee makers.
Education
The ConDems promised that education would not suffer; they have
increased the budget by 0.1%. Nick
Clegg proudly announced he’d secured an “additional
£2.5bn of investment each year” –
extra money paid direct to schools to encourage them to take on
children from deprived backgrounds.
In
June, David Cameron promised to “take money from outside
the education budget to ensure that the pupil premium is well funded”.
It turns out that £1.7bn of the £2.5bn comes from other
education cuts – things like the educational maintenance allowance.
And £800m comes from the welfare budget. A case of
robbing the poor, to give to the poor.
The
ConDems promised a rise in the school budget of 0.1%, when you consider
that the number of pupils is set to go up by 0.7%, the school budget
will actually fall by 0.6%. If you remove
the £2.5bn the Condems are claiming is new money, the reduction
in the budget is greater still.
Don't
you just appreciate this caring FAIR coalition we have?
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