Vital benefits to be cut while MPs’ salaries soar

Smug: George Osborne knows he doesn't deserve his huge salary - but he also knows you can't do a single thing to stop him increasing it, adding calamity to injury by cutting payments to the very poor.

Smug: George Osborne knows he doesn’t deserve his huge salary – but he also knows you can’t do a single thing to stop him increasing it and, just to rub it in, he wants to add calamity to injury by cutting payments to the very poor.

George Osborne wants billions of pounds cut from the UK’s social security budget, at the same time he and his fellow MPs take an enormous, undeserved pay boost.

Osborne, who spent 50 minutes patting himself on the back for restoring the economy to growth with his austerity cuts – even though they had nothing whatsoever to do with what little improvement there has been, said he wanted to push people on benefits further into poverty in order to meet deficit reduction targets.

“You are going to have to find billions of pounds more in welfare savings if you want to reduce the deficit, eliminate the deficit and get our debt falling,” he told the Treasury Committee.

A BBC News report tried to suggest that if the Conservative Party wins the next election, welfare (that’s the Tory word for social security) may be cut to protect spending on public services.

But this seems completely implausible. He is proposing a cut to benefits like Jobseekers’ Allowance (£71.70 per week at current rates) while MPs are set to receive an average pay rise of more than twice as much (£145.75 per week) – and that’s just the increase!

Average MP pay will be £1,419 per week, up from £1,273 per week at the moment. The Chancellor, of course, receives far more. His pay will rise to £2,863 per week from £2,580 per week at the moment.

He takes home 36 times as much as a jobseeker gets on benefit; he wants 40 times as much; and he wants the jobseeker to take the brunt of his plan to reduce the deficit – a debt that was not created by the jobseeker but by rich bankers who, like Osborne, have sailed through the last five years of recession on a pillow of taxpayers‘ money.

That is the human cost of Conservative-led government.

It is a cost that this country simply cannot afford.

Vox Political is funded entirely by donations and book sales.
You can make a one-off donation here:

Donate Button with Credit Cards

Alternatively, you can buy the first Vox Political book,
Strong Words and Hard Times
in either print or eBook format here:

SWAHTprint SWAHTeBook

latest video

news via inbox

Enter your email address to follow this blog and receive notifications of new posts by email.

18 Comments

  1. jaypot2012 December 12, 2013 at 9:57 pm - Reply

    The poor have no more to give!

  2. […] Vital benefits to be cut while MPs’ salaries soar. […]

  3. Nick December 12, 2013 at 10:30 pm - Reply

    it looks like George Osborne and IDS were made for each other

    at the end of the day the mp is just a typical CAB worker and a bad one at that in most cases

    that’s the reality of a mp i use to be a CAB worker many years ago working at the weekend for free with my main job in the bank during the week

    over seventy thousands pounds for a mp a year is the most bizarre thing I’ve ever heard of in where you talk a lot of old bull week in week out and come up smelling of roses and are paid a fortune

    it’s no wonder the kids of today are way behind other countries as they must be thinking i’ll be all right i just have to talk a load of crap and i’ll swim through life

    • joanna December 14, 2013 at 1:45 am - Reply

      Nick did you read the comment that was left by someone who knows him, he apparently did time for armed robbery and he was hit by the bedroom tax because he apparently beat the crap out of his girlfriend, she left taking their 3 kids with her. If that is true I feel no sympathy for him!

      • Mike Sivier December 14, 2013 at 3:10 am - Reply

        Joanna, I think you replied to the wrong comment by mistake – are you referring to the disabled man ‘crushed by financial pressure’?

        If the comment you mention is correct, then we should put it in its proper context. You would be unsympathetic because he was a poor excuse for a human being, a matter that has nothing to do with the bedroom tax – which remains a terrible, repressive, and ultimately self-destructive policy (it will cost more than it can save).

  4. Nick December 12, 2013 at 11:18 pm - Reply
  5. shareen December 12, 2013 at 11:39 pm - Reply

    Disgusting. These politicians just want to kill off the poor and need exterminating. I can only pray that people vote them out for good in the next election, wipe the smug look off his idle face.

  6. Thomas M December 13, 2013 at 1:16 am - Reply

    Of course MPs do need to be paid, but not a revolting amount, and certainly not at the cost of the poorest people in society. Give the MPs a low basic amount but with bonuses for every genuinely good thing they do, as there are a few good MPs out there.(not many good ones however.)

  7. moondancer_by_night December 13, 2013 at 2:06 am - Reply

    Trouble is,to the average life long tory voter it all sounds so reasonable. :-( Theres a rubbish piece in the express today that just shows how much some rags will kow tow down to their tory overlords. It makes me wonder how much of a back hander was paid…. so sad, people even believe the lies they read about the lazy sick and disabled. Yeah, I chose to be born disabled..and yet the idiots actually believe it…

  8. […] George Osborne wants billions of pounds cut from the UK's social security budget, at the same time he and his fellow MPs take an enormous, undeserved pay boost. Osborne, who spent 50 minutes pattin…  […]

  9. PublicAnimal9 December 13, 2013 at 9:19 am - Reply

    what a disgusting excuse for a human being

  10. beastrabban December 13, 2013 at 9:24 am - Reply

    Reblogged this on Beastrabban’s Weblog and commented:
    Next week on Radio 4 one of the programmes will be a debate on whether satire has harmed politics. I honestly don’t think so, though I do believe that the cynicism about politicians and the political process, which has meant fewer and fewer people are turning out at elections to vote has been promoted by some comedians. The real cause of this alienation isn’t comments by Billy Connolly or Russell Brand such as ‘Don’t vote, you’ll only encourage them’, but simply the sheer venality and cupidity of the politicians themselves. The British public were angry and disgusted just before the last election by the expenses scandal. The revelations that MPs were massively claiming expenses for even the most trivial personal items was particularly bitter at a time when many people were seeing their own salaries and welfare benefits frozen or cut. Osborne’s plans to cut welfare benefits even further, while MPs have been voted a massive pay rise, will do even more to embitter and alienate people. At least Richard Nixon, whose name has become a byword for political corruption, had the self-awareness to realise that his actions would put the idealistic young off politics, and that he deserved to give those kids an apology. The party leaders, including Cameron, are clearly aware of this as well. Yet Osborne believes he can blithely get away with reducing the poor even further into the most desperate, grinding poverty, with no repercussions to the image of politicians and the political process in this country. This shows the smugness, complacency and sheer arrogant dismissal of his victims and their opinions at the heart of this man and the administration of which he is a part. And as a result, far more people will turn their backs on politicians and vote with their feet at elections. He and the other politicos willing to accept their massive pay rise while others are having to face starvation and fuel poverty are doing far more damage to politics than ‘Spitting Image’ or ‘The New Stateman’ ever did.

  11. seachranaidhe1 December 13, 2013 at 1:19 pm - Reply

    Reblogged this on seachranaidhe1.

  12. Terry Dawe December 13, 2013 at 10:45 pm - Reply

    Can we not have North Korean Justice for IDS and Idiot Wind Osbourne,all done in 15 mins?

  13. joanna December 14, 2013 at 12:23 pm - Reply

    Hi Mike I am so sorry I did put the reply under the wrong comment. I agree the bedroom is reprehensible. The man involved listed that as one of many concerns, the only reason I wouldn’t have sympathy with him is the way he treated people.
    My apologies also to Nick!

    • Mike Sivier December 14, 2013 at 12:28 pm - Reply

      I’m glad we sorted it out. :-)

      • Nick December 14, 2013 at 6:16 pm - Reply

        easy mistake Joanna and thanks mike :)

Leave A Comment