So how exactly is George Osbornes proposed wage increase a “living wage”? It’s anything but, it’s a token PR gesture to the plebs to derail labour.
It’s particularily brazen, isn’t it. The living wage is £7.85. Announcing something less and calling it the living wage is just a barefaced lie. It’s just an increase in the minimum wage.
More debt for the poorest students, hurrah. Justified with the same false numbers used to justify all student loan decisions- the actual cost of lending is almost certain to be higher, it always is.
Tax credits, tax credits… It’s a completely unsound concept of course and fundamentally a subsidy for businesses. Moving to better pay and less subsidy is of course desirable. But they’ve only bothered to do half of that, there’s nothing in this budget to actually drive the compensating pay rises that are required (no, the not-living wage doesn’t achieve this)
Looks like they are going to stop paying people to breed.
Or, that they’re going to start punishing children for wantonly being born.
The thing is… The actual budget isn’t what they promised, 2 months ago. 12 bn of cuts in 2 years, that’s the long term economic plan. 2 months later, already backing out. Was it always a lie? Or are they just incompetent? We will never know, seems reasonable to assume the former. But that’s the headline- Government Breaks Election Promises Even Faster Than Usual.
The odd thing is that as with much of their other policies we have to be relieved that they break their promises, because if they’d followed through, it’d be worse. But what does that tell you, that we have to hope our government is lying to us?
Still, we have to cut this spending, and cut these taxes, because otherwise we’ll be Greece.