Cameron speaking in 2010. (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

For the government  it’s Good Friday, but for many families with children who will lose £510 a year due changes to the tax and benefit system, today is most definitely a Bad Friday.  David Cameron insists that his party is the party of, “the strivers, the grafters, the family raisers,” but like the much maligned, “we’re all in it together,” this is proving to be another Tory lie.

The figures come from the much respected Institute of Fiscal Studies (IFS) who showed that families with two children are bearing the brunt of changes due to come into effect from the start of the financial year. Cameron dismissed the findings saying he,”did no accept the figures.”

Many people believe that Cameron’s government is losing touch with people but I think that it is quite clear that they were never in touch in the first place. The granny tax, the pastry tax, now the children tax. What did the millionaire cabinet come up with for the rich? A cut in the income tax!

The rational behind the cut in top rate of tax was that the rich weren’t paying it so the rate had to come down. Perversely  if the rest of us don’t pay our tax then we don’t get a tax cut we get prosecuted.

So if by, ”the strivers, the grafters, the family raisers,” Cameron actually means, “the bankers, the privileged and the super-rich,” then yes I agree but otherwise, pull the other one David.

George Osborne

Never in my memory can I remember a Budget that has been so openly leaked as this one. Many national newspapers have carried stories that can only be described as brazen. So here is what I expect to hear George Osbourne announce tomorrow.

The biggest issue will be cutting the 50p tax rate. This has been widely muted by tory supporters and other high earners. There has been speculation that it will drop to 45p but I think Osbourne is much more likely to try to emulate Nigel Lawson who, in his 1988 Budget,  abolished the 60p top rate totally in a move that caused such controversy the Common sitting had to be suspended. The top rate of tax will fall to 40p and we will be told that it will generate more cash and super rich will pay more anyway because the government intends to close tax loop holes.

There will be a move on stamp duty avoidance but not a mansion tax.

The LibDems will be appeased by a commitment to international  aid and the raising of the personal allowance, not to the promised £10k but that will be stated as the intention.

Last year the  Chancellor mooted the idea of raising the annual charge for non-domiciled residents from £30k to £50k. As he never actually raised it, I expect and announcement on this tomorrow.

Sunday trading laws will be out and statements explaining where income tax is being spend will be in.

Osbourne will crow about borrowing next year failing below £100bn and failing inflation. He’ll mention something about the UK’s AAA credit rating but will not dwell on the fact the his polices  seem to have put it under serious threat.

Duty on beer and cigarettes will go up but I wouldn’t be surprised if fuel duty is either frozen or any increase deferred for six months.

Image via Wikipedia

Today from The Chimera Paper, a tale of three parts

Part One: The Benefit

Child Benefit to be precise currently paid to parents of children school age. Paid for every child regardless for the parents’ circumstances.

Part Two: The Chancellor

George Osbourne, not the sharpest knife in the draw, but one day he had an idea.

And this was he idea: he thought that if you or your spouse earn more than £42 475 a year then from 2013 you shouldn’t receive child benefit. He presented it as the government sharing out the pain of the austerity plans fairly. We are, after all, “All in it together,” and he told everyone this was, “Tough but fair.” What’s more, it didn’t involve putting up taxes so wouldn’t offend Tory MPs who hoped that by the time it came to be implemented we’d all be getting better off and those hit would scarcely notice.

Part Three: The Coward

Well as we know it hasn’t really happened that way. We’re not getting better off and in fact wages are falling in real terms. So enter David Cameron. Cameron took a look at the chancellors plan and realised that people (mostly women but not always) who stay at home and bring up their children while their married partner earns £43 000 or more were complaining that the government was robbing them of thousands of pounds a year for doing, what the Tories had always said was, the rich thing.

Well Cameron is used to being unpopular, he doesn’t mind taking on the NHS, forcing public servants to pay for bankers bonuses. He attacked teachers, nurses, doctors and wants to privatise the police. This whoever is different.

Why?

Well stay-at-home mums with higher rate tax payer husbands are natural tory voters and clearly he can’t upset them. Time for a cowardly U-turn. It doesn’t matter really, he can make up the lost money by reducing other benefits. It doesn’t even matter what benefit just so long as it is one claimed mostly by non tory voters. Fortunately that’s most of them.

A Government appeal will be heard on Monday against a ruling which says it must publish a risk assessment of its controversial NHS reforms.

In November, the Information Commissioner concluded there was a “very strong public interest” in disclosing the risk register, which details the potential impact of the Health and Social Care Bill.

The Department of Health had earlier refused freedom of information request to publish the register, saying there is a stronger public interest in withholding the register from public scrutiny than in publishing it.

The department told the commissioner it must be able to use the register without fear the information will be put in the public domain “in an unmanaged way” while its policy continues to be developed.

The commissioner rejected those arguments and ordered the register be published.

On Monday, the Information Rights Tribunal will hear the Government’s appeal against the commissioner’s decision.

Health Secretary Andrew Lansley has said it would be “completely misleading” to publish the register, which was put together before changes were made to the Bill and had been intended as an “internal mechanism”.

He said that, to be effective, a risk register requires all those involved to be frank and open about potential risk.

Labour argues that full disclosure is needed and local risk registers already show the scale of damage that could be done to the NHS by the Bill.

Shadow health secretary Andy Burnham has said some of the regional risk registers “predict poorer treatment for cancer patients”.

In one example, South Central Strategic Health Authority warned “the pace and scale of reform, coupled with savings achieved through cost reduction rather than real service redesign could adversely impact on safety and quality”, he said.

NHS London’s report identified “a risk that women could be exposed to unsafe services which could cause them harm”.

The British Medical Association (BMA), the Royal College of GPs and the Royal College of Nursing (RCN), which all want the Bill scrapped, have also called for the register to be published.

Last month, MPs voted by 299 to 246, a Government majority of 53, against Labour’s motion calling on ministers to release the register.

If the latest hearing, which is set to last two days, goes against the Government, it still has the right to appeal to an upper tribunal run by the tribunal and courts service.

A Department of Health spokesman said: “Risk registers are departmental management tools that play a key role in the formation of Government policy. We believe that their publication would risk seriously damaging the quality of advice given to ministers and of any subsequent decision-making.”

He said a substantial number of risks relating to the Bill had already been set out in a separate impact assessment.

Mr Burnham said today the Government must “come clean”, adding: “It’s essential that patients, the public and Parliament knows the full-scale of the risk the Government is running with the National Health Service before approval is given to this Bill.”

He added: “The public needs to know what are the full-scale of the risks that the NHS is facing before this debate is concluded.

“These issues that will be in the risk register go to the heart of NHS services, whether they are safe, whether they are good quality and whether we can continue to rely on the health service .

“We’ve already got data from local risk registers in the NHS and they reveal some very worrying things.”
Prime Minister David Cameron said last month that Mr Burnham had blocked the publication of a risk register in September 2009, when he was health secretary.

Mr Cameron said it showed Labour “absolutely revealed as a bunch of rank opportunists, not fit to run opposition and not fit for government”.

Mr Burnham said that register related a whole range of things the Department of Health was looking at, including pandemics and terrorism.

“My argument is I wasn’t initiating the biggest ever reorganisation at a time of financial stress,” he said, adding there was no Information Commissioner ruling in his case.

Unite’s general secretary, Len McCluskey, said: “Andrew Lansley is deceiving the public about the true implications of the Health and Social Care Bill by his dogged refusal to publish the risk register.”

He said the refusal was “recognition that the reforms will risk patient care and cost millions to implement – taxpayers’ money which should be spent on patient care. “What have they got to hide?”

photo by sirqitous

What a government this is. It thinks that the way to help the unemployed is by making them homeless, the way to help the employed is by making them jobless and the way to repairing the British economy is my driving us back into recession. Now a new gem, you can help poor families by changing the family credit rules to cost them £4 000 a year! The  change in the, to come in this April, will mean more than those earning under £17,700 will have to up their hours of work by a minimum of eight hours or lose out on all their working tax credit.

Shadow chief secretary to the Treasury Rachel Reeves describes the figures as a “bombshell.”

“In this climate, very few people in part-time work will find be able to increase their hours by up to 50 per cent at the moment. And for a couple with children losing around £4,000 a year, or £75 a week, from this change could mean going out to work makes no sense. This tax credits bombshell is now just a few weeks away. For thousands of families it means going out to work won’t pay and they’ll be better off on benefits. That makes no economic sense at all. The government urgently needs to think again.”

Cathy Jamieson MP, Labour’s shadow Treasury minister, who uncovered the figures said: “This out-of-touch government doesn’t seem to understand what life is like for families on low incomes who work part-time and look after their kids. Parents can’t just increase their working hours when the government’s failed economic policies mean the extra work is simply not there. And the government hasn’t even exempted families with disabled children and full-time carers. Unless Ministers see sense by the time of the Budget this deeply unfair policy risks plunging thousands of families into poverty and worklessness.”

Dear Sir

Image via Wikipedia

David Cameron is again facing pressure to explain how the state controlled RBS, of which the tax payer is the majority share holder, can pay its CEO Stephen Hester a whopping £963 000 bonus on top of his £1.2 million salary. London Mayor Boris Johnson and Labour Leader Ed Miliband both called the bonus’ “bewildering.”

In an interview with the BBC Boris said, ”I find it absolutely bewildering because RBS occupies the same status in the economy as Gosbank did in the Soviet Union: it’s a state-owned bank,” he told the BBC. This is not a free-booting, private sector, risk-taking enterprise, this is a state-owned concern that taxpayers have had to step in and bail out. The idea that this is not in the control of the government seems to me to be far-fetched. Stephen Hester is an able man probably doing a difficult job and his contract must have been drawn up, I guess, when he was appointed in 2008 under Alistair Darling and Gordon Brown. I do not know what they were thinking of when they drew it up that way, but it certainly seems to me to be right that the government should step in and sort it out.”

When asked what he would have done as prime minister, he said: “I think a state-owned bank should be run on public sector lines.”

Ed Miliband said, “This is a terrible failure of leadership by the prime minister. For months he’s been promising action against excessive bonuses, excessive pay, and now he’s nodded through a million pound bonus for Stephen Hester. He’s also been lecturing shareholders about how they need to show they can get a grip on executive pay. He’s the biggest shareholder in RBS. He owns 83% of it through the biggest government, and yet he has let this bonus happen. He’s got to come and explain why he’s done this.”

Related articles

• Johnson attacks ‘bewildering’ bonus for RBS chief (independent.co.uk)
• Stephen Hester: RBS boss ‘should turn down his £1m bonus’ says Jeremy Browne (dailymail.co.uk)
• National News: Miliband accuses PM over RBS bonus (coventrytelegraph.net)
• You: Anger grows over RBS chief’s £900,000 bonus (guardian.co.uk)
• Britain braced for weekend cold and snow (thetimes.co.uk)

Excuses for  failing economic policy does seem to be becoming the norm of this government, so far we have had, the weather, the royal wedding, not the royal wedding, fuel prices, food prices and the euro. Even those who support the government’s austerity agenda are worried that more needs to be done to stimulate growth. Earlier this week the National Audit Office cast grave doubts about the government’s Work Programme to stimulate the jobs market, and our national debt passed an eye-watering £1 trillion.

It is interesting to note that by the government’s own figures the UK is now borrowing more than it would have been had George Osbourne followed Labour’s debt reduction plan. The IMF’s chief economist Olivier Blanchard has called on the UK to consider slowing the speed of cuts in the short-term to avoid strangling the recovery. If indeed it could be called a recovery, under Tory rule the economy has only recovered 45% of what it lost during the recession.

How much more damage needs to be done to ordinary peoples’ lives before this arrogant, smug bunch of millionaires wake up!

Image via Wikipedia

Should non-working families earn more than working ones? Is it reasonable that families on benefit can live in houses that working people can only dream of? These might seem obvious questions but this is the basis behind the government’s proposed £26,000 cap on benefits which will mean no family can claim more than £500-a-week in welfare, the equivalent amount of a £35,000 salary after tax. Iain Duncan Smith thinks the answer is no, it’s not reasonable and the public seem to agree. For all the problems this government is causing people, when it comes to a benefit cap it seems impossible to find anybody who’s against it and it’s not hard to see why.

In my street alone are two six-bedroom houses and one eight bedroom one. I couldn’t afford to live in any of them despite working  full-time as a teacher. All three are occupied by families with no-one working. I doubt that my street is unique.

It seems to me that we need to look fundamentally at the way we pay benefits. Benefit calculations bear no resemblance to the way wages are paid. Working people don’t get a pay raise because they have another child or move to a larger house why should non-working people?

It is strange for The Chimera Papers to support a Tory policy but on this occasion we do!

Image via Wikipedia

Ed Miliband has struck back at Unite Leader Len McLuskey’s after he criticised the Labour Leader for accepting the coalition’s public sector pay freezes.

McCluskey said the move was a “victory for discredited Blairism” and warned the Labour leader that he risked putting the party leadership on a collision course with its core supporters.

In sharply worded riposte Ed Miliband said, “Len McCluskey is entitled to his views but he is wrong. I am changing the Labour Party so we can deliver fairness even when there is less money around and that requires tough decisions. It requires a tough decision to put the priority on jobs ahead of public sector pay. It also requires us to say we do believe the government is going too far, too fast with their cuts but we are not going to make specific promises to reverse those cuts unless we are absolutely sure that we know where the money is coming from. That is right, it is responsible and it is the way we are going to proceed.”

Labour deputy leader Harriet Harman said Labour’s hand have been forced by the coalition’s austerity measures: “When we left government the economy was beginning to grow and unemployment was beginning to fall but because they’ve squeezed the life out of the economy with their austerity cuts they are now in a position of having to continue with that public sector pay freeze. But what we don’t agree with is their proposals on regional pay bargaining, we don’t agree with their cuts in tax credit and we think they should make sure they do it as fairly as possible.”