There is no alternative, apparently. It’s nothing to do with ideology, it’s just something we have to do. Naturalising neoliberal economic managerialism at its best. Really? That question has been addressed at length by many people and will probably continue to be for the foreseeable future. But even if there weren’t an alternative, there are certain things about the cuts package presented today thats gives away its ideological nature – things that couldn’t be explained away by TINA. Here are just a few:
1. They will be permanent – When asked by a fire brigade worker in the summer whether funding would be restored once the deficit has been closed, Cameron replied: “The direct answer to your question, should we cut things now and go back later and try and restore them later, I think we should be trying to avoid that approach”. Tax revenues – the collapse of which has been the cause of the deficit – will inevitably recover if growth picks up. But public services are being permanently crippled, even when the money is going to be there.
2. “The Big Society” – Cameron’s running joke of a “message” actually illustrates something quite important: that he believes in a small state. Okay, so this shouldn’t exactly come as a huge surprise to anyone who has been awake since 1979, but it shows in particular what he trying to achieve with this government. So people are simultaneously being asked to believe Cameron’s pitch that the state should play a smaller role in society and be replaced by philanthropy and private enterprise, but also take him seriously when he says that he really deeply wishes that he didn’t have to cut back state spending.
3. The BBC is being cut – Moving some services like the World Service and Welsh language programming under the BBC’s umbrella could be justified as saving money from other departments that are government funded. That would save the government money. But the 16% cut to the BBC’s income enacted by freezing the licence fee does not contribute a penny to closing the budget deficit or affect the net public debt, as the BBC receives no funding from general taxation. All it does is undermine a public service.
4. It’s obvious that they’re a huge risk – As George Osborne likes to frequently remind Labour, the threat of credit rating agencies downgrading the UK’s credit rating is now nil. Britain will be able to pay back it’s debts, and the cost of government borrowing has been falling since the start of the year. Looking around internationally, the countries that have imposed severe austerity measures have fallen deeper into (or even back into) recession, despite forecasts, whereas countries that have opted for a fiscal stimulus have recovered more quickly. It’s tempting to write Osborne’s mismanagement off as incompetence, but something has to be encouraging him to ignore a huge part of the evidence available to him. An educated guess is that it’s his ideology.
5. It’s the bloody Tories – Do you know who they are?
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I thought this was a democracy, not Camerons ‘Never Never’ land.
Government profits from the VAT increase from your food alone comes to profits of 1 billion a week pocket money for David Camerons government.
Add this to spending cuts that will render 4 million unemployed making an unemployment record high, and then consider he is going to force half a million sick people back to work and off of benefits.
He isn’t saying ‘thank’ you to civil servants and he is turning people against each!.
I don’t think a 10p rise in fuel prices over ‘x y z’ years justifies the way this illegal government and affiliated corporations have bleed every penny from the UK civilization, do you ?
We know we own the competitions fuel pumps now, and further to this BP are the worlds most profitable fortune 500 oil company!.
Cameron is a manic that is adding fuel to the NWO fire and lining his pockets with our money, sinking UK employment and currency just like the Illuminati are wiping out the US dollar in the states.
Clearly he’s pushing the Illuminati agenda for starving us out and forcing his bank of the world currency, and as this is all a situational fact and that Illuminati are Satan worshiping murdering paedophiles, then who have we got running this country ?
And what’s that hand shake mean he just did ?, I said illegal government right ?.
For those of you whom are unaware of the Illuminati, there symbol is printed on each American dollar, the all seeing eye.
The Illuminati were thrown out of England in the middle ages for sacrificing Christian children to their demons, a practice that unbelievably still goes on in the US today which is attributed to such horrific missing persons numbers for under 14′s in the States.
Are YOU going to stand by and let Satan worshiping paedophiles rape YOUR children and there future ?.
Never trust a man in a suit.