Inequality exacerbated by the Coalition’s attack on the poor and the State.

Inspired by today’s Blog Action Day 2014 I took a blog I’d started but never finished, and put in all the links it needed. So here is my piece on how the Tories have used the recession to push their Neo-liberal agenda and increase the inequality between the wealth and the rest of us over the past five years.

No doubt next year in the run up to the General Election, the Tories will claim that it’s their policies that got us out of what’s now called the Great Depression. They haven’t. This recession fitted the normal pattern, ie six years from crash to recover. If you look at other busts in history this is the length of time they take to work through the financial system. Some recessions have been over more quickly, taking just four years, and others more slowly eg The Great Depression of the Thirties. And if you recall, back at the start of the credit crunch economists were predicting a turnaround by 2014 anyway.

So all this Con-Dem government has done is ride the normal life of a recession, but used it as an excuse to pursue their Thatcherite policies of cutting welfare to chuck money at their patrons and supporters in the City. They certainly haven’t cut the deficit which was their big election promise back in 2010, in fact it’s even larger than when they took office.

Let’s look at what’s happened over the last five years and see if anything the coalition has done has helped you.

• Has reducing the top rate of tax to 45% made you better off? No it hasn’t and this is why: Since 2010 1.4 million people earning over £42k have actually had their marginal income tax rate doubled from 20% to 40%.

• Have they stopped the Big Six putting up energy prices? No, costs have risen by 37% since October 2010. That’s the equivalent of £800 from 2004 to 2012, around £100 a year.

• Have you had a pay freeze or even a pay cut? More than likely, because wage increases have been running lower than inflati0n for the last five years. Only in April of this year did salaries finally catch up with inflation. 

• Have your welfare benefits been cut? Yes, and there’s more to come – another £12 million after the next general election, supposedly needed to bring the deficit down. 

• Have you had to turn to food banks because the Bedroom Tax has reduced your housing benefit. Yes, according to Oxfam and the Trussel Trust.

• Is your area suffering a shortage if school places because this govt won’t allow councils to open schools where needed? Instead only free schools and academics can open putting taxpayers money into private individuals hands. Did you know that the local government wants to see ‘the restoration of decision-making on the provision of new schools to local level, as it was prior to the Academies Act 2011.’

• Are your children now running up tens of thousands of pounds in debt to go to university, that will take them decades to pay off? Tick.

• And, why, rather than build houses which the population desperately needs is this government bankrolling mortgages that do nothing more than push house prices up to stratospheric levels. We do not live in a balanced society when your home rises more in value in a year than your salary is worth. Back to the same old boom and bust. 

• But worst of all, the government has used the last four years to privatise our world-renowned and envied NHS on the sly. So just like schooling, your money is ending up in the hands of private companies rather than going back into the system. See here for more info: nhscampaign.org

But what really sums up this governments priorities is that Osborne, your chancellor, took the EU to court to stop the ban on bankers being paid only the equivalent of their salary in bonuses. He used taxpayers money to support the bankers, when t was the casino banks and their high-bonus culture pushing staff to taking bigger and bigger risks that put us into the credit crunch in the first place. Haven’t we, the taxpayer paid enough for their mistakes. Why do we continue to give them free rein? Why hasn’t this recession changed the balance of power and reduced inequality.  

Because recession or no, it’s business as usual for the Tories – capitalists first, and always.

I’m angry about austerity, why aren’t you

On 20th October I went on my first march ever, aged 43 – A Future That Works in London – to demonstrate against the cuts. Bit late you might say, well yes, but up until the financial crash of 2008, I had sort of assumed that those in power knew what they were doing. The last four years has shown this is clearly not the case, as politicians and organisations such as the Bank of England, struggle to explain and contain the credit crunch.

Their solution has been to shore up the banks – too big to fail – by buying them with taxpayers money, and print money to pump into the system – quantative easing – that just swills around in the banks and stock market rather than being passed on as lending as hoped. At the same time they’ve cut back on public jobs, public pay, government spending, investment in education, transport and infrastructure, and started to privatise the NHS. At the same time they’ve raised VAT for all, but cut taxes for the wealthy, taking the 50% top rate rate down to 45% for the highest earners.

This government inherently believes in helping the rich to stay rich because they are wealth creators who spread their money around further than the poor. In fact, the opposite is true – people on low incomes tend to spend every penny they have, because they need to. And when the spend this money it’s more likely to go into the local economy, which has a multiplying effect as it circulates locally making it worth triple its face value.

And there is more pain to come – Osborne is planning to cut a further £16billion during 2015-16. That’s on top of the £18billion in savings set in motion in 2010. The planned universal credit being introduced next year, which merges benefits and tax credits, means that 450,000 disabled people will lose up to £58 a week, meaning many such families are likely to struggle to pay for basic essentials such as food and heating. 1 in 10 of these families may well end up losing their home because of this cut.

Benefit cuts will also hit councils as the low-paid will no longer receive assistance to pay their council tax from 2013. Councils have already realised there will be no point chasing these people for money as it will cost more than they owe. So the councils will receive less money, meaning they’ll have to cut local services, which will affect the local communities. That’s a double whammy if ever I heard of one.

These are just two example of effect the coalition’s cuts are having on the weakest in society.

But, what really rubs salt into the wound of taking money from the poor, is that Osborne’s Plan A isn’t reducing the deficit or ending the recession. This cost-cutting hasn’t worked. According to the IMF, this austerity programme will have taken £76billion more out of the economy by 2015 than Osborne predicted. The Chancellor believed that for each £1 of cuts he introduced it would cut economic output by 50. Instead it is reducing output by 90p-£1.70. This is why the UK had a double-dip recession in 2012.

And what about the future of this country and its workers of tomorrow? Unemployment among graduates is at 1 in 12, with many of those in work doing ‘non-graduate’ jobs, presumably taking them from non-graduates, where unemployment among 16-24-year-olds currently stands at 957,000.

The government is not investing in this country’s future. The time has come to stop the cuts and invest in jobs, technology and education instead. One area to focus on would be the creation of climate jobs – green business grew by 4.7% from 2010-11, providing an extra £5.4bn of economic activity, but we should lso focus on manufacturing, so as a country we’re not so reliant on the financial and service sectors for our economic health.

So, if you’re angry about austerity now, here’s what you can do:

1 Join the anti-cuts protest – A Future That Works – online.

2 Support the national Coalition of Resistance, an organsation that opposes the Con-Den cuts, supported by Unite and other Trade Unions, the National Pensioners Convention, Keep our NHS Public, the Green Party People’s Charter, UK Uncut, BARAC (Black People Rising Against Cuts), DPAC (Disable People Against Cuts), Queers Against the Cuts and many others, by signing their petition.

2 Sign the petition for Fairer Tax to introduce a mansion tax for properties worth over £2million, that could potentially raise over £2billion.

3 Support 38 Degrees action campaign against NHS cuts.

It’s time to take action, not stay apathetic.