David Cameron’s Big Society Bullshit

This is the reality of the Tory budget cuts:

The coalition’s spending cuts will hit the poorest in society 10 times harder than the richest as the health, social and education services they rely on are slashed, an extensive new study for the Trades Union Congress has found. The TUC general secretary, Brendan Barber, says the research proves that the Conservatives are breaching their election promise to introduce cuts fairly.

Lone parents and pensioners will suffer the most from the public spending cuts, the study finds, with everyone but the top 10% of earners losing more from cuts than from tax and benefit changes.

Excluding benefit cuts, single people will lose the equivalent, on average, of £817 a year in services, while a couple with no children will lose £1,012 and a single pensioner £1,017. A lone parent, meanwhile, will lose £1,880.

Wake-up call: Single parents and pensioners are already somewhat strained, financially – so this is really a nice early Christmas present from David Cameron’s “compassionate conservatism”.

And why do they make these cuts? Well, the truth is they make them “just because” – there’s no financial justification for them whatsoever. As economists like Paul Krugman and Joseph Stiglitz point out, these cuts can only exacerbate the crisis by boosting unemployment.

So when British people, especially pensioners and single parents, are now hurled into poverty by the hundreds of thousands, they need to know that David Cameron and his government are not doing this to fix he economy. They are doing it because, doing so, they can give more tax cuts and privileges to the rich. Let’s not forget what Cameron is made of.

Link: Coalition cuts will hit poor 10 times harder than rich