George Osborne admits to conference: ‘I can’t make the economy work!’
‘For the privileged few’: George Osborne.
Of course, he didn’t say so in quite as many words, but that’s what he meant.
Perhaps you need to be convinced?
Okay. According to the BBC, he said in his conference speech today (Monday) that a future Conservative government would freeze benefits paid to people of working age for two years, in order to “save” £3 billion.
This is important because he reckons “an extra £25bn of permanent savings would be needed to eliminate the UK’s deficit”.
“The £3 billion saving is part of £12 billion in welfare reductions previously floated by the chancellor. He also said there would be £13 billion of Whitehall savings, which will include public sector pay restraint.”
How wrong-in-the-head can one man be?
In the same speech as he announced a huge pensions payout to 320,000 people lucky enough to have a relative rich enough to create a large pension pot and unfortunate enough to have died before spending it all, he said he would be continuing to victimise no less than 10 million households, more than half of which are working (the report said half the households affected by the benefit freeze are working, and those affected by public sector pay restraint are, by definition, working).
These are the people who should be building up the economy, and instead, this monumental ignoramus is crushing them down.
The giveaway is the language being used: Osborne reckons the Treasury has to make “savings”.
What he really means is that he thinks the Treasury needs an extra £25 billion per year in order to clear the deficit. Let’s not debate whether his calculations are wrong. They probably are – after all, he has been wrong every year since he took over as Chancellor, why should things be any different now?
Even if he is right about the sum of money involved, he’s looking at the situation the wrong way. If the Treasury needs an extra £25 billion, then why not build up the economy to provide that money?
This would mean telling businesses that working people should be paid a Living – instead of starvation – Wage, providing them with enough money to buy the things they need, rather than depending on benefits. This money would build up the businesses it is paid into, meaning they would require more employees, boosting the taxpaying workforce and the tax take.
We know that the money is available to do this because our business leaders are banking an estimated £120 billion offshore every year, so arguments that they can’t make ends meet just won’t work.
Alas, it seems this plan is nothing but a forlorn hope. Osborne won’t try to build the economy. He’s been too busy shrinking it over the last four and a half long years.
And he’ll never clamp down on tax avoidance schemes for the very rich.
After all, didn’t he devise some of them?
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The most glaring example of his ignorance is that he said he couldn’t fix the deficit by taxation… But the deficit by definition is the difference between what the government takes in from taxation and what it over spends. So the deficit needs taxes to be put up from the companies it keeps letting off from paying their full whack and there are plenty of other ways this government could cut its spending…. Less champagne, less expenses, less money on nuclear weapons w can never use…
It’s just laughable Mike!! He simply doesn’t even understand rule No1 of economics does he. The more money you take away from people the less there will be paid back into the economy. It’s simple stupid!!
What a fool: he should look after UK’s INCOME first, not its expenditure! It is so easy to change the law to stop wealthy individuals and corporations (many of them foreign) from avoiding tax. Once all this extra money is brought INTO the economy, THEN he could look at our expenditure and find that we do not need to reduce it!
I would really like to know as to where all the money that has been cut from benefits and the different departments, plus all the money that has been taken away from claimants for really stupid reasons that leave people destitute, where is it?
Must be some of the money idiot Duncan Smith wasted on cocking up Universal credit before it was ‘reset’ to disguise the wastage
The man is not fit to run a car boot sale never mind the economy, he makes me ill, will have trouble sleeping tonight having read this. He and his group of baffoon’s need to go now, not next May. I truly hope my prayers are answered and they are removed for ever never to cause such harm to ordinary folk again. They are despicable corrupt liars of the worst sort, good riddance.
If they get back in that’s my calling card my wife and I will get out of the UK anywhere but here. We have put our house on the market in readiness for escape from the UK it has been totally destroyed within four years by these criminals.
There’s not really anywhere to go that isn’t as bad, or worse, than the UK right now. Even Australia is heading down the Tory/NewLabour path, unfortunately.
So its more pay freezes for the low paid, more draconian attacks on the poor the needy the sick and disabled, because they are draining the nation of all it’s money, and more tax breaks for the hard pressed millionaires then. Can’t be fairer than that can you Mr. Osborne.
if I’m not mistaken, regarding the very last line in the article – I read somewhere that he had up-to 4 tax firms helping [him] write the tax laws and what not … don’t know if there is anything to back that up though admittedly…
Like this?
http://voxpoliticalonline.com/2013/01/31/lets-cut-the-link-between-politicians-and-tax-avoidance-firms/