I feel the Tory members of the cabinet must have had a very jolly Christmas playing with their new board game, “Cuts to the Benefits for the Sick and Vulnerable” This came to mind when the Chancellor of the Exchequer the Right Honourable, not my words, George Osborne announced cuts to the Benefit system of £25,000,000,000 (£25 billion). Actually, when all the figures are collated it is over £60 billion.
To quote George Osborne, he said "We’ve got to make more cuts £17 billion this coming year, £20 billion next year and over £25 billion further across the two years after. That’s more than £60 billion in total." The Telegraph
Mr. Osborne said that 2014 will be "the year of hard truths" and that "Britain faces a choice". The Government is on course to borrow £111 billion this year, almost double the £60 billion it was forecast to borrow when Mr. Osborne took office in 2010. The national debt will hit £1.2 trillion by April, and is due to carry on rising, hitting £1.5 trillion by 2018. It means the Treasury is spending £50 billion a year on debt interest to Britain’s lenders. The BBC
What irritates me is so far, although I may have missed it, no-one either when interviewing the Chancellor or reporting this very important news challenges these figures and by how he came to them. I can imagine George, his friends and colleagues playing this game after a very good lunch quaffing the after dinner Brandy and cigars as they pull out a card with a figure on it, say £17 billion and deciding where it should go in the cuts to the benefits. Just like picking up a card of “Chance” in Monopoly and laughing at the choice.
A friend of mine is a carer for his brother who has severe mental health problems. Every time the Tory led Government announces cut backs or decide to revise the benefit system he fears the worst for his brother and himself. I feel they, the government, have no conception of how many people, through no fault of their own or by their choice, are doing their best to live a life as best they can.
Not happy to celebrate over the festivities with this he decides to come up with another great wheeze this one concerning people Under 25s. The Chancellor full of “bon homme” decides he wishes to remove housing benefit from the Under-25s. It is estimated that this will only save about £50 million after the people such as parents, victims of domestic abuse and similar are taking into account.
Department of Work and Pensions figures show that 351,678 people under the age of 25 claim housing benefit at a cost of £1.8bn. Of these 55.6% are parents, which mean the cuts would not apply to them. Osborne's plan would therefore produce savings of £827.4m in this area. But Whitehall sources suggested this figure could be reduced to as low as £50m once other groups among the under-25s, such as victims of domestic violence, are excluded from housing benefit cuts. "It is laughable that you can get anywhere near £12bn in cuts this way," one source said.
Fiona Weir, chief executive of Gingerbread, which represents single parents, said: “Almost half of under-25s supported by housing benefit are single parent families with young children, for whom moving in with mum and dad simply isn’t an option.”
Alison Worsley, deputy director of strategy at Barnardo’s, said: “Any proposal to remove housing benefits from all under-25s risks leaving some of this country’s most vulnerable people stranded. We must not forget that many disadvantaged young people starting out in the world simply do not have a family that they can turn to.”
Once again I can see why the Prime Minister, David Cameron, stated that the Tory Party “is no longer the nasty party but the caring party.”
McTaggart
N.B. 1, 000,000,0000, (1 billion) = one thousand million.
In the U.K. a billion, (1,000,000,0000,) used to be one million million and some people still use it today.
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