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.
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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%.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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.’
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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.
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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.
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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.