"The huge cut in housing support, and the end of lifetime tenancy of council houses, introduces the cold steel of domestic turbulence into many poorer families who were hanging on in the best of times. A commitment that "wages are never exceeded by welfare" will mean a downward pressure on welfare, in an environment where wages are already depressed.

Meanwhile, hundreds of thousands of forthcoming unemployed from the public sector have to hope in what Joseph Stiglitz (Alex Salmond's new economic advisor) calls the "confidence fairy" of private-sector revival to appear. According to Stiglitz, economic history shows that austerity measures in a slump rarely, if ever, create the "jobs boom" predicted by advocates." (from Thoughtland)

I don't believe in fairies. Neither do you.

In times like this, gallus humour prevails, Armando Iannucci: "I think the cuts were fair. It's about time bedbound homeless people with learning difficulties were taken down a peg or two." But there's a need to move beyond the constant shift between laughing and desperation.

"I think the cuts were fair. It's about time bedbound homeless people with learning difficulties were taken down a peg or two."

Put this on a bumper sticker for the US Tea Party.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_wp4O7v5320

SPENDING REVIEW 2010: Unions threaten riots as 500k public sector jobs axed | Mail Online

Unions told the Government to brace itself for French-style street protests last night after the Chancellor confirmed that half a million public sector jobs will be axed.

Militant bosses said the paring back of the state payroll would spark the kind of `resistance' that has led to outbreaks of violence across the Channel.

The Liberal Democrats

Waves of people voted for fairness, not the lick-spittle cowardice that has been demonstrated in this fawning following of disaster capitalism that the senior party gets you to go along with. Is the watered down changes to the voting system that you have got for this betrayal of your constituents really worth the trip back to the wilderness that is surely coming your way in the very near future?

When we came into office, we inherited an economy that was on the brink. With the largest budget deficit in Europe and no plan for tackling it, Britain faced huge economic risks. These could only be dealt with by a clear plan to deal rapidly with the worst financial position this country has faced for generations.

On Wednesday, we set out that plan. And while the scale and pace of the action we need to take is unavoidable, we can choose how we do it. The Spending Review sets out those choices: to spread the burden fairly, to promote economic growth, and to invest in the life chances of our children. These are hard choices that affect millions of people, but they are the right choices to set our country back on the road to prosperity.

...

Yes, it's going to be tough, and everyone will make a contribution, but those with the broadest shoulders will bear the biggest burden. That's why we've reduced taxes for the low paid, and increased them for the richest. It's why we introduced a banking levy - and we've made it our aim to extract the maximum sustainable tax revenues from the banks that got us into this mess.

The UK Coalition Government is basically The Tea Party Movement in power. #bbcqt #thisweek @markthomasinfo

Comment Prime Minister David Cameron has taken personal charge of sorting out the UK's defences. Not only has he cocked it up more than somewhat, he has also slashed vital helicopters for our troops fighting in Afghanistan - and then lied about it.

If you want detail on that last bit, skip to the last page. Otherwise, we'll take it point by point.

First up, make no mistake, these are Cameron's own personal cuts. The just-concluded review process was sufficiently contentious that Defence secretary Liam Fox could never have handled it himself: in any case the structure of the British government forbids this, as the head of each of the armed forces has direct access straight to the Prime Minister. This in effect cuts their nominal superiors - the Chief of Defence Staff, the Defence ministers, even the Chancellor himself - out of the loop. Not to mention the fact that it was Cameron's decision to ring-fence the much larger NHS budget: a 4 per cent cut at the NHS would not only have matched the savings from yesterday's 8 per cent MoD cuts, but paid to sort out its budget crisis as well.

A rainbow coalition of every non Tory in Parliament was a non starter, given the attitude of various Labour figures (not just anti-Nat Scots Labour MPs but also Brown's refusal to sacrifice his own political career by an immediate resignation and various veteran Labour politicians publicly rubbishing the idea).

A minority Tory government would have been able to prepare the battlefield for an Autumn general election. That election would probably have produced a majority Conservative government, free to make cuts with no regard whatever to the concept of fairness.

The coalition has been influenced to do things like raising the starting point for income tax and the rate of capital gains taxation, which a purely Conservative government would not have done.

Naturally the larger party in the coalition has more influence on decisions than the smaller one. However that is not to say the smaller party can do nothing to modify policy.

Nick Clegg, the deputy prime minister, has taken the highly unusual step of attacking the respected Institute for Fiscal Studies, describing its methods of measuring the fairness of the coalition's controversial spending review as "distorted and a complete nonsense".

The Liberal Democrat leader also contradicted IFS claims that the spending review would see cuts in spending in classrooms by insisting the coalition had provided a cash increase per pupil for every schoolchild, and had added on top a pupil premium for deprived children worth £2.5bn. He described the premium as one of the biggest engines for long-term fairness.

The public is split over the coalition government's plans for drastic cuts, according to the first poll conducted since Wednesday's comprehensive spending review.

The YouGov survey for the Sun reports 41% saying that the government's moves are good for the economy, 41% saying they are bad, and 18% saying they don't know.

But, asked if the cuts were too harsh or too cautious, 44% said too harsh, only 6% too cautious and 38% just right.

And asked if the spending reduction was being managed fairly or unfairly, 50% said unfairly while only 36% said fairly. In addition, 49% said the government was cutting too fast, against 4% who said it was too slow and 35% said about right.

No widespread fad ever passes, however, without leaving some fashion victims in its wake. In this case, the victims are the people of Britain, who have the misfortune to be ruled by a government that took office at the height of the austerity fad and won't admit that it was wrong.

Measures announced in the comprehensive spending review will hit women twice as hard as men, according to research by the House of Commons library.

Yvette Cooper, the shadow foreign secretary and shadow minister for equalities, who commissioned the research, said tonight that the changes represent the biggest reversal in opportunities for women since the end of the first world war

Of the £8.5bn being raised by cutting direct contributions to individuals, £5.7bn - two thirds - is coming from women, while £2.7bn is being raised from men, the Commons library says.

In June's emergency budget £5.8bn was raised from women and £2.2bn from men.

That means that of the total £16bn being brought back into the exchequer by the coalition through direct tax benefit changes, £11bn will come from women.

Sorry, but s'reverence, I think Hari is dead wrong.  This is an extreme economic theory that has succeeded -- not failed -- wherever it has been tried.  

It has succeeded in transferring huge chunks of both industrial and biotic resource from the public/commons into private pockets;  it has succeeded in consolidating a greater and greater proportion of global wealth into the hands of a smaller and smaller number of oligarchs;  it has succeeded in rendering the general populace less secure, less educated, less healthy, shorter-lived, more desperate -- a more "willing" and "flexible" workforce, in other words;  it has succeeded in casting the very notion of government into disrepute;  it has succeeded in blaming poor people for their own suffering;  it has succeeded, in other words, consistently and spectacularly, achieving its architects' (Bosses and finance capitalists, oligarchs) real pragmatic goals (rather than their threadbare lip-synch "principles" and promises).

We are living with the consequences of its success, not of its failure.

Remember games theory:  when a given set of rules predictably and reliably produces a given outcome, then we must assume that the purpose of this game is to produce just this outcome.

The System Works.

The difference between theory and practise in practise ...

n his interview with The Guardian today, Nick Clegg explains why he ditched his pre-election promise to vote against a rise in tuition fees. This time he does not say that it was because he realised how bad the deficit was only after the election:

Clegg says he simply did the right thing after he finally understood why his preferred solution would not have been progressive. The "turning point" came when officials explained that a graduate tax could not apply to European students who would continue to pay upfront fees because they are taxed in different jurisdictions. By law the upfront fees would have to be available to British students, a system that would favour the rich.

A few years ago, the French president Nicolas Sarkozy told an interviewer that he knew the French better than most. Today they were admiring the good looks of his wife; tomorrow they would cut his throat. It hasn't quite come to that just yet, but the French - students and workers, men and women, citizens all - are out on the streets again. A rise in the pension age? Impossible. The barricades are up, oil supplies running out, trains and planes on a skeleton schedule and the protests are still escalating. More than three million people a week ago. Hundreds of thousands out this week and more expected this weekend. And what a joyous sight: school students marching in defence of old people's rights. Were there a Michelin Great Protest guide, France would still be top with three stars, with Greece a close second with two stars.

What a contrast with the miserable, measly actions being planned by the lily-livered English trade unions. There is growing anger and bitterness here too, but it is being recuperated by a petrified bureaucracy. A ritual protest has been planned, largely to demonstrate that they are doing something. But is this something better than nothing?

Councils are preparing for a mass exodus of low-income families from the capital because of government benefit cuts, it has been claimed.

Britain's new Nobel prize-­winning economist today blasts George Osborne for taking needless risks with his huge cuts and exaggerating the chances of the nation­­ ­going bust.

Professor Christopher Pissarides warns that the Chancellor's £81billion package of cuts threatens to send the jobless total spiralling.

In his first newspaper article since winning the Nobel Prize this month, Prof Pissarides says Mr Osborne is putting Britain's "fragile" recovery in grave danger.

Liberal Democrat Simon Hughes has warned the coalition that its planned housing benefit cuts might not be approved by Parliament.

The party's deputy leader told Channel 4 News some of the proposals were "harsh and draconian".

In its Spending Review last week, the government announced a 10% cut to the housing benefit budget.

Shadow work and pensions secretary Douglas Alexander offered to work with Mr Hughes to force a re-think.

The Queen is set to become one of the wealthiest crowned heads in Europe after the future of the British monarchy was secured in a historic deal with the Government that will give the House of Windsor a share of the £210m profits from government estates relinquished by George III.

The Civil List and the parliamentary system for funding the head of state are to be abolished, and from 2013, the Queen will receive her funding directly from the Crown Estate, which owns £6bn of British land and business. The deal means the Queen, and her successors, will not have to dip into her private wealth to help fund her crumbling palaces and staff wages, reducing financial concerns for Prince Charles when he ascends the throne, and potentially leaving him with a vast income.

I just got thru reading a short history of B.C. (British Columbia) in Canada and had the "epiphany" all you have known forever, that Europe, and the British especially developed the North American continent as a business enterprise. A giant meadow in which the English horses and cows could graze.  The HBC/s role in Canada especially struck me was like a government in itself.

Has much changed with the multi-nationals?

alohapolitics.com

4 core promises in Lib Dem manifesto - £10,000 personal tax allowance: now on the way, 800,000 low paid people removed from income tax this year; pupil premium targeted a...(tharr be more)t children from the 10% poorest families - delivered; a green and sustainable economy - Green Investment Bank announced by Chris Huhne, coalition programme greenest of any incoming UK administration, all Lib Dem stuff, not Conservative; radical reform of political system - well lets see what happens with AV referendum, local govt freed up, direct electio ns to House of Lords promised. Add to that radical pension reform on LibDem lines, delay (and effective killing off) of Trident.

And there was always going to be fiscal austerity whoever won - Labour planned 20% departmental spending cuts if they had won, coalition now delivering 19% cuts