No more excuses Osborne, time to go
Posted Under: Economy,GreenFeed,Liberal Democrats,Socialism,Tories
Following the news that the UK is in the worst double-dip recession for half a century, today’s hot trending Twitter topic is #OsborneExcuses. A few of my personal favourites include:
SofiaE3
@SofiaEfree I can explain: I hate poor and working people and this is class war.#OsborneExcusesMark Bowler
@Charisma_Effect I heard he saw a solitary magpie & that’s to blame. He’s hoping tomorrow he’ll see 2, 5 or 6, that should turn things around#osborneexcusesSofiaE3
@SofiaEfree What recession? My Eton chums and I have never been richer.#OsborneExcusesJohn Prescott
@johnprescott If you look at the economic chart upside down it’s actually very positive#osborneexcusesracybaldhero
@racybaldhero “Yeah but, no but, yeah but, no but, yeah but the economy fingered Meredith on the swings round the back of the school…”#osborneexcusesCllr Ben Powell
@benpowell87 The catastrophic slump since we defeated the last Labour government is of course all the fault of the last Labour Government#OsborneexcusesLee Godfrey
@Godfrey_Lee I’m an incompetent chancellor, driven by ideology but with no economic training#osborneexcuses. Oh, that’s not an excuse, that’s the truth
The truth is there are no excuses. I once asked Osborne whether in times of cuts and record debt now is really the time to be cutting corporation tax. For him, the answer was clear. Lower taxes encourage investments, jobs and growth. Today’s figures from the Office of National Statistics revealing a shock 0.7% drop in GDP show just how wrong that was.
But Osborne’s tax cuts for the world’s biggest corporations and spending cuts for Britain’s most vulnerable people are not the wrong answer to the recession because they are not an answer at all. They are an ideological assault on the poor by the rich. It is not a class war, but a class massacre.
Time to rise up. Time to say no. Murmurings among the Lib Dems are already calling for Osborne’s head. But it should just be the first. This government is as morally bankrupt as it has made our country economically. Time for it to go. Time for plan socialism.
Reader Comments
I don’t think we need to go down the socialism route. Given the impact of the housing construction sector in the latest figures, (down 5.25%), and the need for housing, especially in the SE of England, where demand is so high, I’d plump for a change in regulations to boost the construction sector, and of course, as always, TAX THE POOR LESS!
http://blogs.telegraph.co.uk/finance/ianmcowie/100010159/how-tax-on-poor-paying-higher-rates-than-millionaires-went-up-during-coalition-goverments-first-year/
http://www.ft.com/cms/s/0/d1e51060-d664-11e1-ba60-00144feabdc0.html#axzz21eKFtXnS
An interesting criticism of Osborne
Agreed on taxing the poor less. VAT in particular has to come down.
I’d want to see the income level when you start paying tax raised, to at least the 10,000 pounds suggested by the coalition. It make little sense to have people paying tax, and then handing them back money in benefits. Marginal tax rates, often staggeringly high due to the withdrawl of benefits as income rises, are a major disncentive to work.
Just for variety, here’s an opposing view:
http://blogs.telegraph.co.uk/news/danhodges/100172921/george-osborne-is-not-doing-so-badly-at-the-economy-its-politics-hes-clueless-about/
And here’s something I stumbled on about how it is in Osborne’s hands to do something about the economy, and he can’t just blame it on the Eurozone
http://blogs.telegraph.co.uk/finance/ambroseevans-pritchard/100019156/british-regulators-are-to-blame-for-britains-perma-slump-not-europe/
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/finance/economics/9486363/Its-time-to-try-something-radical-to-save-the-UK-economy.html
I’d be keen to see the effect of treating debt and equity equally from a tax basis, I think it might encourage companies to use some of the cash they have sitting on their books.