Day 4658: Is Mr Cameron Laying A Trap for the Liberal Democrats?

Wednesday:

Firstly, congratulations to the Daily Heil for granting Mr Milipede free publicity to totally overshadow the guff our pie-faced Prime Monster came out with at the climax to the Conservatories conference.

But to be honest, David Cameron – Mr Balloon – was probably grateful for anything overshadowing the uninspiring, reheated, frankly tired Thatcherite rhetoric he was coming out with. He looks like he’s decided the next election is a lost cause and he’s gone back to shoring up the base against UKIP

I mean “Land of Hope is Tory”? Are you really going to say that, Prime Minister? Really?

It’s like a line out of “House of Cards” (BBC version): Do you remember the bit where Urquhart (and we the audience) look on and mock at Conservatory conference as an Apprentice-line of Leadership wannabes troop onto the platform to deliver what they think will be the rhetoric to stir the troops to their cause. Like the Britain’s Got Talent without… no, actually, like Britain’s Got Talent. “It’s the right way… the right… way!”. Sad.

The whole conference has been conducted under a banner of “For Hardfaced Badwords”… sorry that should read “For Hardworking Families”.

(I remember the meeting with Cap’n Clegg where we were among Lib Dem members who had words with him about adopting that language – and to be fair, even then his idea of “family” was a broad and inclusive one, not the nasty narrow Conservatory prescription, but he accepted that it could trap him in the same frame and he’s worked hard to avoid it since. Liberal Democrats really can do better than this. Er.)

And there was Master Gideon, pumping up the housing market to the refrain of “I’m Forever Blowing Bubbles”, saying it was time to end the “something for nothing” culture. I look forward to his announcement that Inheritance Tax will be going up to 100%.

But it’s all such a long, looooong way from “Hug a Huskie” or “Let the Sunshine In”, isn’t it.

And of course we have to oppose this monstrous idea that people under twenty-five need to be “motivated” into jobs that don’t exist with the threat of homelessness and starvation.

But here’s the “trap” – can we really pledge to block that without reminding every young person in the country of the last pledge that we made?

Is Mr Balloon’s gambit that as soon as Cap’n Clegg raises this horrible policy, he will fling the tuition fees debacle back in his face and say: “well, you can’t trust the Lib Dems can you”?

In fact the policy is so obviously absurd that it almost look like it’s there as a pre-prepared sacrificial lamb for the next round of Coalition negotiations. We are going to have to make it very clear that dropping that policy is a prerequisite for walking in the door, or we’re going to be in the position of trading away something that’s actually important just to kill it.

In fact I’m wondering whether we don’t need one or two policies in the “you’ve got to be kidding” category ourselves – free moon trips for teenagers, perhaps, and fish-fingers and custard on demand for all Eleventh Doctor fans – before we get serious about abolishing ATOS.

Mind you, at this rate it will be Mr Milipede we’ll be negotiating with anyway. And the message for Mr Balloon? Shut Your Trap.

Day 4299: FREEDOM FROM POVERTY - A Real Alternative to Welfare

Monday:


Chancellor George Osborne has announced that he wants to cut TEN BILLION POUNDS from the welfare budget.

I will pause while you throw up.

Right, back with me? OK, here's a reminder of the BACKGROUND. The Government's total spending is, very roughly, SEVEN HUNDRED BILLION pounds every year.

The total amount spent on what we call "benefits" in the United Kingdom is in the region of TWO HUNDRED BILLION pounds per year.

It's the BIGGEST "BIG TICKET" item in the Budget. So you can see why it's such a TEMPTING TARGET for a rapacious fiscal shark like Master Gideon.

(See table D4 of the OBR's report on the 2012 budget [pfd])

Remember, the NEXT biggest item, at about ONE HUNDRED BILLION pounds, is the NHS which is currently granted SACRED COW status, so he cannot find his cuts there.

After that comes Education (FIFTY billions) under the personal protection of the Deputy Prime Monster and Defence (THIRTY billions) under the protection of a battalion of right-wing Tory Tanks. Nor can he afford to cut the TWENTY-FIVE billion allocated to Scotland with Mr Slippery Salmon's independence referendum coming up.

But it's not THAT easy to cut the welfare bill either.

The Conservatories and their allies in the press have contrived an atmosphere where the word "benefits" is practically synonymous with the word "undeserving", cultivating the idea that there are SWATHES of the country where people sit at home in their PJs rolling about in money while the poor mugs go out to toil.

But that's REALLY not where the welfare money goes. (See IFS analysis [pdf])

About 40% of the welfare bill is PENSIONS. The Government is ALWAYS going on about how pensioners DESERVE their money, and the TRIPLE LOCK means that that 40% is SACROSANCT!

Then about 20% is IN WORK benefits for people on low pay. Remember we are supposed to be all about REWARDING – grit your teeth for this phrase – "hardworking families". So you cannot really gouge that either. About HALF of that (i.e. 10% of the total) is Housing Benefit, which is one of the most important benefits and can make the difference between families being about to afford to work or not. The downside is that it mainly goes to LANDLORDS, rather than the families in need; this is the price we pay for having ridiculously inflated House prices.

The OTHER half is the price we pay for having the minimum wage set below the level where people can survive on it, subsidising low paid jobs for the benefit of employers. There's a serious question that cutting those in work benefits would destabilise the jobs market massively increasing unemployment. But there's got to be SOMETHING wrong with a system (set up by a LABOUR Government, no less) where the Government subsidises employers to pay less than the living wage, essentially allowing companies to increase their profits at the taxpayers' expense.

Another 20% of benefits are for having children (child benefit and child tax credit). For all the fulminating in the Daily Hate Mail end of the press about FECKLESS SINGLE MOTHERS TM, we've already seen what happens if you try tinkering with Child Benefit and the Chancellor might as well write his political suicide note on the same headed paper as try THAT again!

So that's a good 80% of benefits going to people who for various reasons the Government won't or can't upset. That money, like in BULLSEYE, is safe. To half of them you've promised perpetual increases; and the other half you are relying on to keep the economy afloat!

So it comes down to the 15% which goes to the sick and disabled. Nothing quite so "sick" as cutting benefits to the disabled, you might very well think, and frankly with people already DYING this is where we need Captain Clegg to stick to his promise that up with this we will not put.

And only about a measly 3% goes to yer actual UNEMPLOYED people. Gideon could abolish Job Seekers Allowance entirely, and still fall well short of his target.

(That, incidentally, leaves 2% change, most of which is Winter Fuel Allowance and free TV licences, also for the elderly.)

If, like Master Gideon, you are scheming to carve out another TEN BILLION (i.e. a whole 5% of the amount we spend), then it begins to look very VERY hard to FIND that kind of money.

The message of this is that we really need to think VERY MUCH MORE RADICALLY.

The idea that I'd like us to THINK about is the CITIZENS' INCOME.

It's important to understand that while this idea has a LOT of GOOD points going for it, there are some pretty serious drawbacks too and that's why it needs careful THOUGHT.

In its simplest form, the Citizens' Income is a fixed payment to every adult in the country and a flat tax rate on all income.

The ADVANTAGES are simplicity and universality. Instead of a complex mix of means-tested and universal benefits, everyone receives the same Citizens' Income. Because it is universal, it improves take-up so that the benefit is more likely to reach those most in need. Because it is simple, people are not put off by forms. Because there is no withdrawal or taper of the benefit, everyone who is able to work and chooses to do so is better off for doing so. Because it favours neither couples nor individuals, couples are not worse off for staying together but nor are they penalised for splitting up. Because everyone gets the same amount, there is less grumbling about "undeserving". Because we all share in the national income, we are all, to coin a phrase, in it together.

As a smaller advantage, the bureaucracy to organise this exists already largely with HM Revenue and Customs and/or the Treasury's tax credits department. You would, in theory, be able to abolish the whole Government Department, Mr Iain Drunken-Swerve's DWP (Department of Worship and Prayer). Having said that, cutbacks have left HM Revenue and Customs very understaffed, and so we might be better served by retaining DWP staff as part of the new unified tax authority.

The DISADVANTAGES are: firstly, that the unified tax rate has to be set quite high to make the figures balance and this looks like a tax rise (particularly since it would combine the 20% income tax and 12% national insurance bands) – actually most people on lower incomes are better off, but it LOOKS like a tax rise; secondly, although MOST benefit recipients would receive more, there is a disproportionate LOSS of income for certain sections of the community, for example those large families who receive Housing Benefit; thirdly, the flat tax rate, unless set very high, will be an effective tax CUT for those on the highest incomes (although you could retain a 45% top rate to avoid this problem at the expense of slightly less simplicity).

I'm going to work through a bit of MATHS here which you might want to skip over, but it's important to "show my workings" and show how close it all comes to adding up.

The office of National Statistics says that there are 29.56 million people IN WORK in the United Kingdom. With an average salary of about £26,000, that makes a TOTAL EARNED INCOME of more than SEVEN HUNDRED and SEVENTY-FOUR billion pounds.

A single flat rate of tax of 40% (replacing income tax and national insurance for all employees) would therefore raise THREE HUNDRED and NINE point SIX billion pounds.

At the moment, Income Tax and National Insurance together raise roughly TWO HUNDRED AND FIFTY BILLION pounds (See table D3 of the OBR's report on the 2012 budget [pfd]) and, as above, benefits cost around TWO HUNDRED BILLION. This means that the taxes on income raise an excess of FIFTY BILLIONS which is spent on all the other things that Government spends money on. In order to keep up government spending, we should retain this excess. Therefore we have TWO HUNDRED and FIFTY-NINE point SIX billion pounds to distribute.

Given that the population of the UK is 62.6 million (and excluding approximately 10.8 million who are under 18) that would be roughly equal to FIVE THOUSAND POUNDS for EVERY ADULT IN THE COUNTRY.

Currently, the Liberal Democrats are pursuing fairer taxes by raising the personal allowance to £10,000. Under this Citizens' Income scheme, EVERYONE earning less than about £30,000 would be better off. In particular, and as opposed to raising the personal allowance, EVERYONE NOT EARNING ENOUGH TO PAY TAX would be better off.

Here's the BIGGEST PROBLEM then: five thousand pounds per year is LESS than the current basic State Pension and so almost certainly a NON-STARTER. However, it MIGHT be possible to have a higher Citizens' Income IF we were to retain the EMPLOYER'S element of national insurance.

So, the main things to think about before we were to consider a Citizens' Income would be:
• what would be considered a fair rate for the unified tax rate, and should we retain the top rate of tax so as not to be giving the biggest tax cut to the people with the highest incomes?
• what is a reasonable level for the Citizens' Income, if the minimum we could set it at is the current state pension rate – or the targeted £140 per week pension – should we be aiming at more than that?
• what would an impact assessment of the withdrawal of housing benefit say, and would be possible or desirable to retain some element of housing benefit?
• should we retain Employer's National Insurance (which Conservatories describe as the "Jobs Tax")? Might we have to to make the books balance?

A Liberal economic plan should also be looking at how to make sure that employers pay a FAIR wage, through proper enforcement of minimum wage and working time directive legislation, so that people do not NEED State subsidies.

If we COULD make this work, I think this would be an EXCITING and RADICAL departure from Labour's idea of welfare being a Government that graciously gives to those they deem the deserving poor towards a COMMON WEALTH where rather than grudgingly giving to the needy we all share in the nation's prosperity, combining the great Liberal traditions of EQUAL HELP for all and Government TRUSTING PEOPLE and empowering them get on with their own lives.

Day 4194: Mr Balloon and the Culture of Entitlement

Monday:

"I want to screw with COMMON PEOPLE," as Mr Balloon might have put it in his speech about abandoning ALL under twenty-fives in the pub toilets*; "Common people like YOU," as he might have announced to the assembled dignitaries at... it says here Bluewater Shopping Centre.

I know we're hard up as a Nation, but is the Prime Monster REALLY reduced to opening the latest branch of LIDL for a fee?!

"And I Would Have Got Away With It Too If It Weren't For Those Meddling Liberals!" he is believed to have added as the police led him away.

When times are TOUGH and the SQUEEZE is on, it's very, very easy to pick on one group, especially one that is too weak to fight back, and to say that THEY are the ones to BLAME. This week Mr Balloon is picking on those receiving benefits. (Just as last week, losing lots of points, Mr Milipede was shamefully picking on IMMIGRANTS.)

There are a lot of MADE UP stories – mostly HORROR stories – about what an EASY life it is living on BENEFITS, especially if you've got six kids, two ASBOs, a noise abatement order and a council debt collector chasing you. Millions of people IN work (they claim) would gnaw off their own fluffy feet for such luxuries.

The technical term for this is: "a load of old HONK!"

But if you WANT horror stories, here comes Mr Balloon putting the VIDEO NASTY back into the NASTY PARTY.

"Woo, look out!" he tells us. "You might be a couple earning twenty-four thousand between you and unable to afford kids, but the family on benefits down the road has FOUR children already and gets twenty-SEVEN thou (soon to be capped at twenty-SIX) for the privilege." Of course that means they're getting by on four-and-a-half grand per head, compared to twelve-grand a head for our poor put-upon workers, but we'll ignore the details...

"Shivers!" says Mr Balloon, "what about the GOOD GIRL and the BAD GIRL! Good girl went to college, got her qualifications and got a job, but STILL can't afford to leave home. While Bad Girl (let's call her SUSAN – she wears MAKE-UP and probably doesn't believe in ASLAN any more) she went on the dole and got a free house!" Though, obviously, by "free house" we actually mean "grotty bedsit" in a concrete tower block or some suburban terrace where the hugely over-inflated rent goes straight into the pocket of the landlord. Look, he's got a string of buy-to-let properties and votes Conservatory so HE can't possibly be to blame!

"Nightmare!" the Prime Monster reminds us. "Some of us have to commute for hours and stare longingly at properties we could never afford, some of which are occupied by benefit claimants! The horror! The horror!" Though, naturally, by "us" he means "you proles" what with the State providing HIM with a FREE HOUSE, right OVER THE SHOP (and ANOTHER one in the countryside, convenient for the PUB where you can leave unwanted offspring behind**).

And WHO'S fault is that? After YEARS and DECADES of successive Governments (yes, including THIS ONE to our SHAME) colluding in a plan to keep house prices inflating on the grounds that (a) "An Englishman's Home is his Castle (even when he's mortgaged to the eyeballs)" is very popular and you don't mess with very popular and (b) the housing bubble is all that's keeping the British economy afloat at the moment. We can't have the bank taking ANOTHER hit, can we. And remember it was NEGATIVE EQUITY as much as Black Wednesday that nuked the Conservatory reputation for economic competence in the early 'Nineties.

This CONSPIRACY has entailed squeezing SUPPLY to keep prices HIGH through massive under-provision of SOCIAL HOUSING (all those people are on the Housing Benefit in private accommodation because there are not enough COUNCIL HOUSES for them) and a conspicuous LACK of private development while building companies have sat on their land banks and watched the price of their assets INFLATE.


When it comes to OLD people (you know, the ones that VOTE and complain loudly about GRANNY TAXES when told they might not continue to get even more on top of everything everyone else gets) Mr Balloon says this:

"If you have worked hard all your life, then you deserve real dignity and security in your old age."

But you know what? I think EVERYBODY deserves real dignity and security.

And ACTUALLY, as one of the richest countries on the face of the planet, we SHOULD really be able to afford that. No, let me REPHRASE that. As a county that earns more in a year than the one hundred and thirty poorest countries COMBINED, we damn well OUGHT to be able to afford that.

Where's the DIGNITY in asking someone in a wheelchair to walk across a room? Or a heart-attack victim to pick up a pencil? Where's the SECURITY for the young woman or man thrown out of their home for being pregnant or gay or just not getting along? Or just for losing their job? Or because the Royal Bank-that-WE-own of Scotland decided to upload PACMAN instead of their new BANKING SOFTWARE?

And, you know, maybe if Mr Balloon had been a bit less GAGGING FOR IT to cut the 50% tax rate to 45% then he wouldn't HAVE to be talking about finding ten billion squids of benefit cuts.

(Because if Mr Jimmy Carr-crash's tax avoidance scheme was legal but MORALLY WRONG, what does he think about the MORALITY of giving all those rich people another legal way to avoid a great chunk of their tax?)

Look, it's LORDS REFORM WEEK, so this may all be TACTICAL, a bit of FLIRTATION with the Bonkers-in-the-Nut Brigade to keep them onside, tossing a bit of, as they say, red meat to the Howling-at-the-Moon wing of the Conservatory Coalition.

(A dozen points adrift in the polls, it would be RIDICULOUS to think that he might be preparing the way for a snap Autumn election – perhaps on the pretext that he lets the Lords Reform Bill fail and forces us to collapse the Coalition.)

No, far more likely this is a case of crying "Who Will Rid Me of these Troublesome Lib Dem Priests!" and then denying any suggestion he's egging on a rebellion against Cap'n Clegg's reforms when they get stabbed to death in the Cathedral.

(And the Beardy Weirdy of Canterbury is discovered over the body... no, that's Midsomer Murders.)

But if he's POSING as Conservatory TRADITIONALIST, the questions for Mr Balloon are these: what happened to LOYALTY to our fellow citizens? Weren't we all supposed to be in this together?

What happened to sticking by FAMILY through thick and thin? Weren't we all supposed to a part of that Big Society?

And what happened to, dare a militant atheist fluffy elephant suggest it, CHRISTIAN DUTY to the poor and in need?

The Welfare State has, he says, "sent out some incredibly damaging signals."

(More damaging than "we hate young people"; "we hate disabled people"; "we hate poor people"; and "yes, we ARE the Nasty Party"? That IS incredible! No, sorry, back to Balloon...)

"That it pays not to work.

"That you are owed something for nothing...

"...It created a culture of entitlement."

It's not very "One Nation" is it?

This is CHURCH OF THATCHIANITY, blue in tooth and claw. You can spot it in the LANGUAGE: "aspiration", "self-reliance", "evil bloodsucking vampire overlords", er...

I COULD say that it really DOESN'T "pay not to work", unless you've been given an ESTATE IN SCOTLAND by DADDY, and only someone whose privilege has left him totally insulated from reality might think so. A few ludicrous and largely-hypothetical counter-examples do NOT disprove this rule.

Or I COULD suggest that actually we ARE owed "something for nothing", even if it's only our FUNDAMENTAL HUMAN RIGHTS. Though I would say that anyone lucky enough to be in Great Britain (whether they were born here or immigrated) deserves at least a small share of the MASSIVE NATIONAL WEALTH that we inherited through no effort of our own (and which our forebears largely STOLE in the first place).

But instead, let me reply with some of the "incredibly damaging signals" that THATCHERISM has sent out:

"That being very, very lucky is the same as working hard."

(It's not, and privileged white males who got where they are thanks to an enormous leg up from their parents and the perverse way that our society values parasitical city jobs over CREATIVE or CARING professions should remember that more than most).

"That people who don't want to slave away at a conventional job in the rat-race (and yet are not landed gentry) are somehow dangerous subversives who are a threat to OUR WAY OF LIFE!"

(If they are it's only because OUR WAY OF LIFE desperately needs threatening! Endlessly repeating the cycle of boom and crash in the hope that it will do something different is, as they say, economic MADNESS. In the end, we'll ALL need an alternative lifestyle.)

"And that there's nothing wrong with putting your own interests ahead of other people and Devil take the hindmost!"

(There surely IS, as Mr Carr-crash discovered to his personal shame and cost, and it's a pernicious reversal of Hobbes to think that Government has no business interfering in the "war of all against all".)

"Compassion isn't measured out in benefit cheques," says Mr Balloon.

Perhaps not, but people will COUNT these CUTS as a measure of Conservative CRUELTY.

(Not that ALL Government spending is GOOD and RIGHT, not all cuts are WRONG. A fifty percent cut in the subsidy to the privatised companies that run our railways badly would save as much money as Mr Balloon's slashing of benefit to younger people. But we can't have shareholders taking the risk as well as the rewards, can we!)

Mr Balloon's proposed solutions – flying kites – include cutting all under-25s out of the Welfare State, like we don't already tell young people we don't value them; indexing benefits by the LOWER of wages or prices, so benefit recipients are always going to fall behind; and, asking for a "contribution" from people who are still getting benefits after a couple of years. So, workfare then. Which is neither "work" nor "fair". And then we cut their benefits until they fade away. Or, presumably, they're rounded up and shot.

Thank goodness he ADMITTED that the Liberal Democrats would NEVER STAND FOR THIS.

And with Hard Labour TROUBLINGLY unable to answer the question "what would you do differently", it seems like we are the ONLY Party that still believes in a bit of COMMON DECENCY.


If Mr Balloon is going to talk about people with a culture of entitlement, well, he could START by having a look around HIS OWN CABINET TABLE, and just count the privately-educated underachievers with no more excuse to be there than their own self-importance and imagined right to rule. I really don't think people need lessons in "no one is owed a living" from a man who has never done a proper job and has enough inherited wonga that if he got bored of swanning about Number Ten he wouldn't ever have to work again.

"Dieu et mon droit" doesn't mean "My god, what a load of right-wing hooey". But it SHOULD.


*Yes, that again.

**No, I'm really NOT letting that one go, am I.

Day 4098: Oh What A Lovely Budget. Apparently.

Wednesday:



A letter arrives. It's from Captain Clegg! He seems unnaturally happy about Master Gideon's latest budget. I'd better check the POSTMARK – ah yes, he appears to be writing from CLOUD CUCKOO LAND...

Dear Millennium, We can be proud that the biggest tax cuts in today's Budget go to millions of working families.

Well, the most EXPENSIVE tax cuts, perhaps. 'Cos with only 330,000 people paying 50%, it costs LESS OVERALL to give them a bung.

But anyone earning more than £155,000 has had a tax cut of more than £250, and that's MORE than the £220 a basic rate taxpayer will get.

As a result of this Budget, someone working a full week on minimum wage will see their income tax bill cut by over 50% compared to under Labour.

Increasing the personal allowance to £9,205 takes us within touching distance of our number one manifesto pledge – ensuring no one pays any tax on the first £10,000 they earn.

Successfully not benefitting EITHER of my Daddies, because one earns too much and one earns too little. Congratulations to the households of TWO top-end basic rate payers, though. You earn more than both Daddies put together AND get two tax cuts. Plus you keep your Fluffy Child benefit! Hooray!

Thanks to our changes, a basic rate taxpayer will be paying £45 a month less in tax than they would have been under Labour.

Although strictly speaking, that's £45 LESS the extra that they are paying in VAT and duties on fuel, beer and ciggies. And yes, Hard Labour WOULD have put those things up too (especially the VAT) but you're not comparing a fictional Labour budget with Gideon's actual figures – you're comparing the actual tax rates they had in 2010.

We can be proud that we've ensured the richest in our society will be paying more, much more.

The Tycoon Tax, an increase in stamp duty for high value properties and other new taxes on wealth...

Oh please! At Conference you were implying that the Tycoon Tax should be a tax on INCOME, some sort of minimum percentage that billionaires like Mitt Moron ought to pay. Today it's a hike in stamp duty. STAMP DUTY?! This just looks like spin. And not very good spin.

And Stamp Duty is a tax on BUYING property, not on HAVING property – it's not really a wealth tax, more a barrier to entry to the Tory Toff circles.

Or maybe it's just misplaced punctuation!

To be fair, some of the more EGREGIOUS get-out-of-tax-free loopholes have been, well not closed but made considerably more modest and that DOES gain us back a sizeable whack more tax, clawing back about a BILLION quid over five years.

So if you take the Tycoon Tax to mean the capping of some of those tax avoidance schemes PLUS a similar amount from the Stamp Duty then you might get to...

...will raise five times as much as the 50p tax rate. Those with annual incomes of more than £150,000 a year will be paying on average an additional £1,300 a year in tax, as a result of this Budget.

How?

Of course, this is a Coalition Budget and we did not get our own way on everything.

Well, it IS true that the budget has been an obvious case of a Liberal Democrat tax cut at the bottom and a Conservatory tax cut at the top, and that's GOOD, we can work with that. But the question is WHERE DOES THE MONEY COME FROM. And it looks very like it's come from FASTER and DEEPER cuts.

And then we see ANOTHER TEN BILLION off Welfare payments.

Conservative priorities are not ours. But as on so many other issues...

We rolled over and let them have their way?

...we have made sure that there is a real Liberal Democrat stamp on this Budget.

And a real Conservatory kick in the badwords.

Lower taxes for more than 20 million working people; effective new taxes on the rich.

This is a Budget we can be proud of – a Budget for the many, not the few.

Really, Cap'n? Proud?

Thanks for all the support you give to the party. Best wishes,

Well, I support the Party because we're supposed to be BETTER than this. We ACCEPT that we cannot do the ALL things we want to do, nor that we can stop the Conservatories doing many bad things we'd rather that they didn't.

But that DOESN'T mean taking pride in a Budget that basically tickles the Tories' tummies and gives us one concession and sending us off with a pat on the head.

How did we manage to let them NOT put up any serious wealth taxes?

How much* of that ten billion welfare cut goes towards mitigating the cut in BENEFITS for RICH PEOPLE?

And how about we STOP trying to OWN the whole Government, take CREDIT for what we HAVE got (a basic rate tax cut) and ADMIT to where we DIDN'T get our way (oops, no mansion tax!).

I'll be PROUD when we HAVE a Lib Dem budget. Until then, I'll stick with being thankful for small mercies and APOLOGISING for shaf... bad-word-ing the poor. AGAIN!

PS:

*It's about two-thirds of a billion a year, actually. Look, I LIKE universal benefits, they're simple, unbureaucratic and get to the people who need them, but that doesn't mean I'd choose child benefit for duchesses over employment support for the disabled.


.

Day 4073: Workfare? Workfoul?

Saturday:

It's entirely voluntary and the idea is supposed to be to give young people the experience of holding down a job, of getting up in the morning, of working as part of a team and so on. Just without the experience of GETTING PAID FOR IT.

I have listened to the lovely Sarah Teather defending this government scheme, and pointing out that 50% of people who try it out DO go on to get a proper job afterwards. And I've heard that the scheme is terribly popular and that people are desperate to get on it. But with record youth unemployment, YOU'D be desperate for anything that might give you an edge too, wouldn't you. And I just can't get over the NIGGLING feeling that we have MINIMUM WAGE legislation in this country for a REASON.

We already know that the minimum wage is set TOO LOW. Otherwise why do we need to have WORKING TAX CREDITS? Surely we all know that these were not just the moody monomaniac's compulsion to control who is and is not "deserving" but also Mr Frown's ADMISSION that he would rather make other taxpayers subsidise criminally low salaries than force his new chums in big business to pay a living wage. A win-win for the authoritarian friend of the millionaires!

And now we're letting them pay NOTHING and getting people to work for the price of their benefits.

OK, it's not "slave" labour because you can just walk away; but it is a BLEEDIN' LIBERTY!

If a job needs doing – and burgers DO need flipping, shelves DO need stacking – then it ought to be worth PAYING someone to do it. If your company is getting some desperate youth to do it while on the Job Seekers, then that's a PAYING JOB LOST.

Waterstones quits unpaid labour scheme
Matalan quits unpaid labour scheme
Tesco and Argos quit unpaid labour scheme
Greggs the Bakers quit unpaid labour scheme
Burger King quits unpaid labour scheme

Do you see a pattern developing here?

Day 4043: Yes to Help for Low Earners, But We NEED to Help the No-Earners Too!

Thursday:



Today, Cap'n Clegg will be calling on Master Gideon to ACCELERATE the increases in personal allowance, giving lower and medium earners more of their money back SOONER (paid for by taking MORE tax from the better off).

This is a GOOD idea. It's giving money back to the people who are most likely to spend it, and more spending will help with the woes of a shrinking economy and falling high street sales.

But cutting taxes for people IN work DOESN'T help the growing numbers of people OUT of work. People we seem to be ATTACKING rather than HELPING.



Like many of my Liberal Democrat friends, I got an e-mail this morning from Mr Dr Vince "the Power" Cable, was by way of a TRAILER for Cap'n Clegg's speech, telling me he is PROUD of the Coalition's commitment to increasing the tax allowance to £10,000.

I WISH I could take PRIDE in this Coalition, but I'm afraid the best I can manage is a sort of NUMBING of the GNAWING HORROR that we are barely taking the edge off the Conservatories' aggressive right-wing agenda.

This sort of thing can't convince me we're doing the RIGHT thing; merely that we're trying to do the LEAST WRONG thing.

(Well that and that the ONLY thing WORSE would have been propping up the AUTHORITARIAN LUNACY of a discredited and economically illiterate HARD LABOUR Party!)

So while you are considering Mr Vince's e-mail, can I also direct your attention to THESE THOUGHTS written by our friend Mr Simon.

Now, I confess that my first reaction was DEFENSIVE – a LOT of my first reactions are defensive these days; I wonder if I'm developing STOCKHOLM SYNDROME – responding to a story about bullying Job Centre staff with the thought "well, would that REALLY have been any different under the LAST government?" In fact, I'm sure we can all get out the DVDs that show that this sort of thing has been in currency since the last Conservatory recession. In fact, probably since the one BEFORE THAT!

And with the increasingly CONTROVERSIAL Welfare Bill still actually in Parliament (and hence all over the news), surely we can't be blamed for how the Law stands just YET – this is still HARD LABOUR's law of demanding people get back to work because of Mr Frown's PROTESTANT WORK ETHIC, not the Conservatory law of, er, demanding people get back to work because of Mr Iain Drunken-Swerve's VICTORIAN VALUES.

But read on!

Because what Mr Simon has to say about MESSAGE and TONE is frightening and true. The messages that are spilling from the Conservatory part of the Coalition – aided and abetted by the frothing venom of the newspapers – are all about VICTIM BLAMING and a VILIFICATION of the NOT WELL OFF.

And so long as we continue to use the words "hard working families" we're SUPPORTING this TOO and that is WRONG with a capital WRONG.

It does not MATTER that Cap'n Clegg assures us that he means "hard-working" in a BROADER sense; it's still using the word WORKING. It implicitly says "and not working equals BAD".

There are two things to say to this:

FIRST: people who are out of work and looking for work – especially when there is NO WORK – do NOT need the extra grief of getting it in the neck all the time.

SECOND: people who are out of work and not looking for work – good luck to 'em. It is NOT the business of government to MAKE people live their lives any particular way and it is COMPLETELY HYPOCRITICAL of the Conservatories to laud as "bold entrepreneurs" the wunch of bankers who get government support while decrying as "scroungers" the bunch of people getting government support because they're not employed any more.

If you WANT help to get back to work then the government should give it, but if you DON'T and if you can live on sixty-seven squids a week then frankly you deserve a NOBEL PRIZE FOR ECONOMICS and not more rude words from people who couldn't get elected against the worst Labour government in History!

(And since I've been saying for AGES that I would support a flat Citizen's Income if only I could make the maths add up – the problem remains the disproportional effect of Housing Benefit in a housing market that is still massively over-inflated, which is why that's proving such a botherer in the current debate about a "cap" on benefits – and I would be the hypocrite to say anything else now.)

There is very little fraud in the Benefits system, and I bet that any there is is more than cancelled out by people doing THEMSELVES out of Benefits because the whole business is too darn complicated.

And because of that, the PLAN was a GOOD plan to SIMPLIFY the benefits into one, and to change the way benefits are taken away as you get into paid work, the so-called "taper", so that working does always pay.

But at a time of massive fiscal contraction that was always going to be difficult to do FAIRLY (and I THOUGHT Mr Drunken-Swerve had got extra money from the Treasury to make the transition more PAINLESS) and doing it at the same time as trying to cut projected benefit payments is WILDLY DODGY!

(Even though that's a not-increasing-the-total-payments-by-20%-like -wot-Labour-said-they-were-planning sort of "cut" i.e. a not cutting but not increasing either sort of cut – or a letting INFLATION inflict the PAIN for you sort of cut, if you prefer.)

But we DID win the fight to make Chancer Osborne increase benefits – not just pensions, but ALL the main benefits – in line with the 5.2% Inflation in September this year when he wanted to use a lower number. Which on the one fluffy foot is a GOOD THING because it's hard enough to live on benefits as it is; but on the other fluffy foot focuses the problem on cutting NUMBERS, because you can only cut the OVERALL Benefit bill by cutting the AMOUNT that people get OR the NUMBERS of people getting it.

Which gets us to the aggressive approach to job centre staffing.

The government spends something like three quarters of a TRILLION pounds and about a THIRD of it goes on the NHS and about another third goes on the benefit bill. If you've sworn not to cut the money to the NHS, then there really is NOWHERE ELSE to cut than the benefit bill. And THEN most of the benefits are actually PENSIONS. You can't cut THEM either – even if it weren't political suicide to piss off the "grey vote", EVERYONE hopes they're going to end up a pensioner one day. The great UNSAYABLE of British politics is to suggest a freeze in pensions or freeze of the NHS, 'cos that's where all the money REALLY goes.

But if you CAN'T freeze those, well, you can see how more and more of the cuts get focused on the segment called "in work benefits" which our Conservatory (AND Hard Labour!) masters appear to think should be called "ought to be in work" benefits.

Quite simply, there is NO WAY to make this add to fair treatment.



At the moment there is BIG BLAME BATTLE going on.

Hard Labour, for obviously self-serving reasons, have been pushing HARD – and with some success – the idea that it was gambling by bankers that trashed the economy.

(Though, of course, that's only HALF the story: what the bankers were gambling ON was that millions and millions of ordinary people would carry on borrowing to fund lifestyles in excess of what they were earning, egged on by a government that was borrowing to fund a lifestyle in excess of what the whole economy was earning.)

In return, the Conservatories (and us!) have with even greater success pinned a lot of the blame for the CRASH on Hard Labour. But the blame for the ONGOING pain... that's more difficult to explain.

(Particularly since a LOT of people are feeling the "double whammy" of the economy grinding to a halt at a time when they have huge debts. The answer "well that's your fault" not being very conducive to re-election.)

Inevitably, we turn to the very human way of excusing ourselves for the pain that we are causing. By BLAMING the very people on whom the burden falls heaviest.

And then BOTH sides take a pop at the IMMIGRANTS!

It's got to STOP.



We should make the benefit system simpler, that's a given.

We should make it more generous too, but we can't get the money.

(Sure, we could talk about mansion taxes and no corporation tax cut, but we won't get them past the Conservatories and we can't cut MORE from anywhere else! And borrowing is RIGHT OUT!)

So let's talk about what we CAN do which is change the LANGUAGE.

'Cos no one is a "scrounger". They are all future entrepreneurs. Or future artists. Or future teachers.

Mr Balloon needs reminding that his BIG SOCIETY depends on people who AREN'T GETTING PAID: volunteers, or carers. Or at the root of it, your basic parents.

So as Liberal Democrats let's make it a CAMPAIGN to talk POSITIVELY about the people who aren't working because they haven't got work or aren't able to work. We can start with thinking of better words than "unemployed" or "job seekers". I've come up with the phrase "free sector" (as opposed to the "waged sector"), but you might think of something better.

And perhaps "families doing their best" instead of the wretched "hard-working families".

Yes, it might sound like political correctness, but if political correctness didn't work, we'd still be using the N word and Conservatories wouldn't talk about "death taxes".

In summary: let people get on with rebuilding their lives and they might start to rebuild the economy.


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Day 3830: Either Or-ery

Monday:


Over the weekend Mr Mark Reckons wrote a piece I'd recommend reading on "Whataboutery", which is the way to play politics dirty so that you can attack someone who's proposing a policy you actually agree with.

This is the FALLACY of the RED HERRING: introducing an irrelevant case into an argument.

I'd like to give you a companion to Mr Mark's piece with one on another FALLACY, the fallacy of the FALSE DICHOTOMY.

Most famously presented by the former-Monkey-in-Chief, President Dubbya, as "you're either with us or against us", we've been seeing a LOT of this at the moment.

The most common occurrence is the "NHS fallacy": any reform is to be opposed with cries that the "only choice" is between the status quo and "privatisation", usually "privatisation by the back door" (to get around the fact that whatever it is clearly ISN'T going to be an actual privatisation). In fact, of course, the Hard Labour government oversaw the genuine privatisation of great swathes of our NHS through their Public Finance Initiative, which saw hospitals bought up by private companies and leased back to the public at often excessive rents (which is one of the things leading to the embuggerance of the NHS in spite of above inflation increases in government spending).

Topical this week, the public sector unions are going to go on strike over pensions because the "only choice" is between their current arrangements and "absolute daylight robbery".

Although SOME people might say that it's the UNIONS' position that is: "your money or your life public services"! I mean, just WHO is holding the "gun" saying "don't make me hurt the children" here?

Actually, the double standards employed by the Unions in this "debate" are outrageous. First, the Unions announce that they are going to go on strike. Then Mr Danny sets out the government's position. Now I call that being open and honest with the public, but the Unions call it "deeply inflammatory". They call it deeply inflammatory AFTER they've already announced that – regardless of the ongoing negotiations – they've decided to call a strike. Check the dates on the last two quotes: "Public sector workers back mass strike": 15th June; Danny Alexander's speech: 17th June. Deeply inflammatory. Right.

And now we have Ms Mary Bousted, leader of the ATL teachers' union, accusing the government of a "doing a Robert Maxwell on our pensions". So that would be saying that the government is illegally taking money OUT of the teacher's pension funds and using it to prop up, what, the rest of government spending?

Well, at the moment there is NOT ENOUGH money in those pension funds to meet the expected needs of the teachers (and other workers) who are paying in. So the government has to top that up from general taxation (that's ON TOP OF the employers contributions that we make).

So that would basically be the EXACT OPPOSITE of "doing a Robert Maxwell". That would be keeping the pension fund afloat at the expense of everyone else.

They tell LIES and they call us NAMES and then they have the CHEEK to try and distract your attention from it by saying that WE'RE traducing THEM!

I'd call Ms Mary a Bousted Flush!

Meanwhile, here is another example, this time from the Labour Conspiracy website:

"Our choice is to treat people with dignity or go back to the 1930s"

Is it actually USEFUL to polarise a very difficult debate about benefits and disability into "basic dignity" versus "1930s work programmes, institutions and eugenics" (and that's really not sufficiently coded to avoid cries of Godwin's Law, now is it)?

Could we not start from a basic recognition that the government isn't TRYING to be evil?

The aim of Mr Drunken-Swerve's reforms is SUPPOSED to be to enable people who want to work to be better off if they go to work, not - as the quote implies - to euthanase the disabled.

For the last thirty years, governments have been hiding unemployment among the genuinely long-term ill. It seems to me that one thing that could actively harm the interests of those who are ill is having to support the long-term unemployed out of the same pot of benefits. So, I have to ask: would a benefit system that undid that be better able to provide basic dignity for those in genuine need?

(You COULD reasonably argue "no"; e.g. you might argue that a sort of quasi-universal provision might be more effective, but you would need to justify that as a position, rather than just start from the assertion "any reform must be bad for the long-term ill".)

And if you are going to undo that hiding of unemployment, how are you to do it?

Again, it seems that either you let anyone claim disability-related benefits and accept that the benefit will be spread so thin that it helps no one, or you accept that at some point there's going to be some kind of medical testing involved.

At which point we're down to a question of degree.

So, the proposed tests sound to be too intrusive and too impersonal. And they sound like they are FRIGHTENING people (which I have to say language of "eugenics" exacerbates, which if you think about it puts you on the same side as the scary people - even though the LabCon author is clearly also one of the ones who are scared). Surely the useful question then is: "how do we conduct any testing that we have to in the most sympathetic and dignified manner?"

Clearly there ARE problems on the Coalition side here, almost certainly stemming from a terror at the department of benefits of seeing a huge spike in unemployment claims. So clearly they want to do the undoing by not jumping people from disability benefits to unemployment benefits, but by jumping them straight from disability to work, and that's just impractical. Equally, this is clearly a terrible time to be doing any forward thinking reform because the overriding need for spending cuts will at best muddle your thinking. Like, WHICH target is your main aim? Making sure that sickness benefits go to the sick? Making sure that work actually rewards the worker? Or cutting the overall benefits bill? (And your opponents are ALWAYS going to come back at you with "it's about the cuts" "it's ideological" (yawn)!)

Wouldn't it be better to think about OUTCOMES rather than INTENTIONS? The road to the toasty place being notoriously paved with the latter (as anyone who experienced the last government can testify), saying that a policy is wrong because it does this, or because it fails to do that is both more PRACTICAL and more HONEST than saying that it is just "evil".


The biggest false dichotomies, of course, are on the ECONOMY. And BOTH SIDES are guilty of using 'em.

"We must do this or the economy will fall over!"/"We must not do this or the economy will never recover!" is the now too-familiar battleline between the Coalition and Opposition, and this obfusticates the fact that the policies of both sides are REALLY VERY SIMILAR.

"It was the fault of the last Labour government"/"it was the fault of the bankers", is another.

OF COURSE it is in the Coalition's political interest to portray the Labour Party as credit-crazed spendthrifts, ruinous wastrels who would have us in penury and our children in hock forever. We, after all, are the ones who have to be in power while the agonisingly painful policies of deficit reduction are enacted.

But equally, the Coalition has to have an answer to Hard Labour's naked political opportunism when they seek to pin every scintilla of economic agony to Master Gideon's incompetence at the reins (a "bad news" policy by the Shadow Pocket Money Thief that leads to some frankly bizarre doublethink: for example, when there is a fall in unemployment, apparently, it's because unemployment is a "lagging indicator" when it goes down but "evidence of why we need a plan B" when it goes up).

(This of course was Mr Balls recent interview with Mr Marrmite, the one where he said that "the trade unions must not walk into the trap of giving George Osborne the confrontation he wants" because he spotted that choosing between supporting strikes or supporting the government was a trap for HIM!)

Any half-way decent economist (I do NOT include Mr Bully Balls in that category) will tell you that the cuts have neither begun to bite nor had nearly enough time to change the direction of the economy. The two main things affecting the economy are that MASSIVE RECESSION that happened in 2008 (in case you somehow missed it) and the fact that the government printed like a GAZILLION POUNDS leading to inflation and devaluation. (Though neither of these things are NECESSARILY as bad as they are painted either – another false dichotomy. E.g. inflation reduces the national debt as a share of GDP – as any property owner who survived the Seventies will tell you, it didn't half make their mortgages a doddle; though, flipside again, long term it started the inexorable house price inflation that leaves us now so overburdened.)


The truth is, the policies of Labour and Conservatories (and Liberal Democrats!) are not that different – in fact, given for example the discovery that Mr Alistair Dalek was secretly planning a VAT rise, you can bet your bottom dollar (which may be the only one you have left by now) that had they been returned to power, Hard Labour would have conducted a swift spending review and said "oops, it's worse than we thought, guys, have you SEEN what's happed in Greece? We have to cut faster and deeper!", and done EXACTLY what the Coalition is doing.

The MYTH of Labour's "pain free" cuts… their airy assertion that they would cut 80% of the deficit that we would but their tactical oppositionalism against every single £ reduction in spending… their repeated false dichotomy of "our way or the evil, ideological inflicting of pain on the poor"… it makes it VERY DIFFICULT to have anything approaching a RATIONAL DEBATE.

"We'd like to cut this."

"EVIL!"

"Well, maybe if we only cut it by half."

"INFINITE EVIL!"

I'm sure it plays well to the Labour Chorus, but it gets the country nowhere.

Regrettably, Mr Millipede's response to talk of a leadership crisis is a power grab for control of Shadow Cabinet appointments showing that Hard Labour are turning more INWARDS than looking outwards. While Mr Bully Balls, apparently, no longer even sees the need to run policies by the Shadow Cabinet before launching them. And sofa government worked so WELL for Lord Blairimort, after all.

In an equation where it is EITHER the Coalition OR the Labour Party, Labour seem intent on making themselves IRRELEVANT.

But even THAT is a false dichotomy. The Coalition of course consists of TWO Parties, and the true clash of ideas is now between Conservatories and LIBERAL DEMOCRATS.

You see, the ULTIMATE "either/or" is the MEEJA's HEADS WE WIN-TAILS YOU LOSE game of EITHER "on message" OR "gaffe". If you're "on message" you're a ROBOT, no to be trusted, only lying when your lips move, enemy of the people. If you" gaffe" it's even worse. Hence all this recent fuss over "U-Turns", as though LISTENING to people, DEBATING policy even, shock, CHANGING YOUR MIND were BAD THINGS for a government in what we still LAUGHINGLY describe as a DEMOCRACY (leading to the UTTERLY INSANE suggestion from a Questionable Time panellist that governments should do what is in their manifesto and only what is in their manifesto and the people should shut up for five years and only judge them at election time). DEBATING policy – in CABINET as well as in PARLIAMENT rather than at intimate tête-a-têtes with Fleet Street Editors – reduces the meeja's POWER to dictate the agenda. That's why, for them, a thinking government is a "weak" government and one that does what it's told (by a Prime Monster who does what she or he is told) is a "strong" one.

Obviously the REAL truth is the reverse, and that is why the Liberal Democrats bring real STRENGTH to this Coalition.

We are used to having Government and Opposition. In the Coalition, the Liberal Democrats are BOTH.

And how LIBERAL is that? Liberalism has NEVER been an EITHER/OR; it's always been BOTH: one and many; individual and community; local and global.

That is how I can write a big old self-important diary about "great big, important-y things" like the ECONOMY and SPACE and STUFF, and Auntie Caron, bless her heart, can read it and bring it right down to the REALLY important and PERSONAL with a post about the need for a real Liberal Voice. And they are BOTH what Liberalism is ABOUT.
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Day 3564: Is this the End for Baby Elephant Benefit?

Monday:


I'm afraid that my CYNICAL response to the news that Master Gideon is cutting Universal Child Benefit from Higher Rate taxpayers was to anticipate that Hard Labour would issue a press release about half an hour later decrying it as "an attack on the very poorest in society".

I was WRONG.

It took them a bit more than half an hour.

Yes, apparently it's "an attack on already hard pressed families" and yes apparently it's "an attack on women".

Sigh.

What happened to the OPTIMISM, Mr Potato Ed?

Is there ANY measure that you wouldn't attack as "an attack"?

How can we HOPE to balance the Budget without cutting anything for anyone ever?





Look, this is BAD. Really it is. I can think of HALF-A-DOZEN good reasons off the top of my fluffy head for having Universal Benefits.

1. Incentive. If people think that the reward for working hard and being thrifty is to LOSE out, then you don't give 'em any reason to work hard. It's the problem Mr Iain Drunken Swerve is wrestling with in the Benefit Reforms.

2. Involvement. The FLIP-SIDE of that is that the people who DO work hard are the ones you are asking to pay out for other people. We're a RICH country, and we all like to feel we do our bit to help each other. But the less that the people doing the paying feel that there is anything that they get back, the more they're going to think "what's in it for me?" You need an incentive for people to pay in too, or you get resentment, and eventually they won't pay, and then you have a problem.

3. Reach. We all know that means tested benefits do not reach all the people who need them, whether it's because people are too proud to ask, or intimidated by a system that they are not equipped (or educated) to cope with, or through simple ignorance or through error by the state. Universal benefits are easy to operate and much more likely to bypass all these hurdles and actually HELP the people who need help.

4. Protection. Lastly there is the TERRIBLE TRUTH that even in the better off families (oooh, paging Downton Abbey!) sometimes mummies can find themselves in POVERTY because their partner keeps tight control of the purse strings. Child Benefit bypasses THAT too by going straight to mummies, and can often be a LIFELINE. The way this works (the benefit is ONLY withdrawn from mummies who THEMSELVES earn more than forty-four "k") ought to mitigate against that being affected here.

5. Simplicity. Anything other than giving a simple payment to everyone is COMPLICATED and needs a BUREAUCRACY to operate it. THAT is clearly why Master Gideon has opted for this cack-handed method of picking only Higher Rate earners to lose the benefit which results in the seemingly PERVERSE outcome that better off HOUSEHOLDS might keep the benefit if two earners separately earn less than the Higher Rate threshold but together earn more.

6. Divisiveness. Treating RICH and POOR differently is only going to EXACERBATE the friction in our society. It helps LABOUR of course, in their DEEP DENIAL that THEY did anything wrong, to keep adding fuel to the fires of mutual resentment, pouring more blame on "the bankers" or "the top 10%".

(I am, incidentally, getting really BORED by the mendacious argument increasingly coming from left-of-centre commentators: "such-and-such an article/minister/newspaper spoke of something affecting the middle class; well, median income is actually twenty thousand pounds and they're talking about people earning forty or fifty grand – that's the top ten percentile". The MIDDLE CLASS is NOT measured by MEDIAN INCOME. These are two COMPLETELY DIFFERENT things. Traditionally, there have been VASTLY more working class people than either middle OR upper class. So OBVIOUSLY the median income would be bound to lie somewhere in the middle of the WORKING CLASS. Even today, with a LOT more people doing "white collar" work it would be REALLY SURPRISING it the ENTIRE upper half of the income distribution were "middle class", don't you think? "Class" is not a simple measure of how much you earn; it is INCREDIBLY complicated to define, depending on heritage, family, ownership and the relationship to land and income generating activates. You are NOT "upper class" if you earn in the top ten percent. You're not EVEN upper class if you earn in the top ONE percent. It just doesn't work that way, and it's simply WRONG to have a go at people for addressing "middle-class concerns" by saying they are focusing on "the rich".

And while I'm ON the subject of idiotic comparisons… saying the Mr Potato Ed won "more votes than either Captain Clegg or Mr Balloon" is as STUPID as saying "well Mr Jensen Button won his World Championship race by travelling a LOT further than Mr Sir Chris Hoy did in the Olympics."

Sorry, where was I. Oh yes…)


The ADMITTED PROBLEM with all Universal Benefits is that they are, by any measure, a bit WASTEFUL. If you hose money over the country to make sure that you cover all eventualities, you're bound to wash quite a lot of it over people who don't technically NEED it.

Not EVERY pensioner needs a winter fuel allowance to avoid fuel poverty, nor a bus pass to get out and about.

Targeted benefits are technically better because they can FOCUS the money onto the people who need it more. If the system works. If they apply for it.

So you have to work it out: does the COST of the bit that you are wasting by making a benefit Universal OUTWEIGH the BENEFIT of reaching people who really need it?

This is where I come down on the side of KEEPING the Universal Child Care. I think it's worth the money.

But then, I'D restore the personal tax allowance to people earning over a hundred thousand pounds too because taking that away is saying that rich people should be treated as different.

Well, actually, I'd go further than that and have a Citizen's Income and do away with benefits altogether, if only the numbers could be made to add up, because that way EVERYONE would get something and I can trust them to get on with their lives their own way without having to make them jump through hoops to satisfy ME that they are DESERVING.

You see, that's because LIBERALS are the REAL OPTIMISTS; not Hard Labour or Mr Potato Ed. Hard Labour are PESSIMISTIC about PEOPLE – they believe that people are BAD at making decisions, that people will get things WRONG if they are not TOLD what to do. I am an OPTIMIST. I trust people to get it RIGHT.


But here's the KICKER.

The numbers DON'T add up. Hard Labour – yes we have to keep saying it – spent all the money. In fact, they spent all THEIR money and rather a lot of OURS too, what with the hundred and twenty MILLION pounds a day we're spending on THEIR interest payments.

So it would cost a BILLION pounds (each year) to keep the Universal Child Benefit UNIVERSAL. And that would mean cutting a BILLION pounds from somewhere else. Housing benefit? Unemployment benefit? Invalidity benefit? The pension? Do YOU want to choose?

This is the real WICKEDNESS of Hard Labour's "attack" attacks.

Every cut that they say we mustn't do, they're ACTUALLY saying: "do it to someone else".


So it's not right. But everything else is worse. And if when we put this right we CAN do better.

PS:

My Daddies do not get Child Benefit because for some reason the Government does not pay out for boys with soft toys. I'm sure Hard Labour could spin this as an attack on something too.
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Day 3509: Mr Chris Grayling should NOT be allowed out on his own

Tuesday:


Dear the Coalition, please remember that Mr Chris Grayling is NOT SAFE to be let out without a RESPONSIBLE ADULT present to SIT ON HIS HEAD whenever he starts spouting reactionary nonsense. Thank you.

Mr Balloon knew this before the General Election and had him quietly bundled away and locked in the playpen with Master Gideon for the duration.

But this morning he somehow managed to slip his training reins and get into the The Today Programme studio and, before anyone could stop him, started saying he would set BOUNTY HUNTERS on BENEFIT SEEKERS.

Let me just say this: SIGH.

In the firstly place, would it be REMOTELY possible to get through just one week without pandering to the Daily Hate Mail's desire to criminalise poverty and LAY OFF the people on benefits?

Handy BBC graphic shows us that deliberate fraud costs us THE SAME as mistakes by the benefits people. Here is an idea for FREE: it is CHEAPER to give your own staff proper training than it is to employ some consultants to start snooping through innocent folks credit card histories. So sort out your OWN mistakes before you start getting heavy with the people you are supposed to be helping.

And it's not even a good TARGET. As Auntie Jennie points out, tax evasion costs the rest of us FIFTEEN TIMES as much as scamming benefits!

Just one fraud, the VAT "carousel fraud" – where a fake importer/exporter claims to import stuff, say mobile phones or computer chips or, these days, carbon credits, then sells the stuff to a "partner" who then exports it again (possibly without the goods ever physically moving), reclaiming the VAT on the UK purchase while the first fella makes off into the night without paying the VAT on the UK sale back to the taxman – was estimate to cost the British taxpayer between a half and two billion pounds in 2008/09 according to Customs & Revenue's own accounts (large pdf); and it is estimated to cost over SIXTY billion euros across the EU.

Let me put that another way: if you set out to clear up fraud, you expect some success and some failure. If you target Tax Evasion and your successes only succeed in cutting it by 10%, you will still save MORE money than if you cleaned up 100% of benefit fraud.

Just think about what is REALISTICALLY ACHIEVABLE: clawing back just ONE pound in ten sounds like it might be doable; saying you'll clear up all the cheating on benefits which has defied governments from the hard right (Queen Maggie) to the also hard right (Lord Blairimort)… ridiculous.

And as I KEEP on having to say: the more COMPLICATED you make the system, the more likely you make it that SMART CROOKS will get the money and NEEDY POOR PEOPLE won't!


But in the secondly place, what, I mean WHAT in the name of all that is fluffy are we doing hiring so-called "Bounty Hunters" to start electronically snooping on people?

No, I'm not going to make this a gag about coconut flavoured chocolate bars, this is SERIOUS.

I mean did we not just go to a LOT of trouble to get RID of a Government that trampled roughshod over such trivia as the INTERNATIONALLY RECOGNISED HUMAN RIGHT TO PRIVACY?

Government's SHOULD NOT be routinely spying on their own people, effectively treating every benefit claimant as a guilty-until-forever-cos-you're-NEVER-proved-innocent potential fraudster. Hard Labour showed that governments find it all too easy to stumble from treating their voters as potential Stasi-esque informants to collusion in rendition and torture.

As for Mr Grayling, saying "oh, but the information is commercially available" is NO EXCUSE, you slap-headed NINCOMPOOP. So are LANDMINES but that didn't stop us signing a treaty that said it was MORALLY WRONG to use them ever again.

There are LOTS of things that are "commercially available" – pirate videos, Thai lady-boys, black market uranium – but would Mr Grayling suggest that the Government should dabble in any of those? No, actually, let's not go there.

For all that the Hard Labour opportunists were "milking it" over the weekend, we know that the Coalition IS capable of seeing policies that are BLOODY STUPID and changing its collective mind.

So, never mind Dog, the Bounty Hunter; this is a DOG of a POLICY. Let's send it to Battersea Dogs home. Along with the MILK.

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Day 3503: Oh God! Have I Turned into a Tory?

Wednesday:


So, here we are, ninety days into the Coalition and life in Government doesn't seem like it's as much FUN as I expected.

Sure if you're actually IN Government I bet it's LOADS of fun, with all those actual levers of power to pull, but for those of us SUPPORTING a Party that's at least kind-of in power, there's a whole load of uncomfortable accommodating to get used to.

Plus we have to put up with being the butt of all the JOKES on "Mock My Week Up" and the "Not Now Show". Yes, play the World's smallest violin.

The problem isn't so much putting up with the jokes – it's not like they've become any less FEEBLE since the "party conference in a taxi" days – it's more finding yourself suddenly shouting at the radio: "no, you idiot, the Government HAS to do this because…" (a sentence that increasingly finishes with a combination of the words: "Hard Labour", "money" and "wasted all the"), and realising with a bit of a SHOCK that you are DEFENDING the Government. Worse still, you actually AGREE with what the Government is proposing!

Case in point:

For a while now, I have been arguing that we should make tax and benefits SIMPLER.

Only blow me if Master Gideon isn't saying we should simply the tax system and if Mr Iain Drunken Swerve isn't saying we should simplify the benefit system.

Oh crumbs, have I turned to the DARK SIDE?!



I think that this is a simple question of FAIRNESS: people should be able to UNDERSTAND what they are being asked to contribute or what they are getting. Firstly, I think that that give people more control over their government if they can see what is being raised. Secondly, I believe that if people can understand their tax more then they are less likely to try and avoid it.

It is well known that UNIVERSAL benefits have a much higher take-up rate: because there is less STIGMA attached (it's something everyone is owed) or perhaps because there are fewer forms to fill in and hoops to jump through. This means that the BEST benefits for reaching those most in need are the ones everyone can get: pension and child benefit.

The DOWN SIDE of a UNIVERSAL benefit, of course, is that there is perceived to be a lot of "waste" spending money on people who "don't really need it".

(Actually, there's a whole road you can go down about "who DECIDES who needs what",; and about how some needs can be disguised by apparent wealth in a partner or family when it's not being shared about; and about inclusivity of treatment if we ARE supposed to be "all in it together" then telling the better off they don't get anything out and have to put everything in is going to alienate your all-important tax base, who in the end have to PAY for the benefits for other people – i.e. you don't want to convince them to vote for something much FURTHER to the right.)

It seems to me that the simplest you can make the system is one called a "Citizen's Income" linked to a "flat tax".

How it works is this: everyone over the age of sixteen gets an "income" from the state just for living here. Then everything you earn, however you receive it whether in cash or shares or moonbeams, is all taxed at a single tax rate. You get NO personal allowances and NO tax credits, but equally you get no withdrawal of the Citizen's Income: you are ALWAYS better off if you do even just a bit of work than if you do none.

You could suggest a system that was something like £100 a week in Citizen's Income, about the level of the current state pension (or 50% more than a lot of benefits), and a tax rate of somewhere in the thirties, let's say 35% for neatness.

Unfortunately I've tried bashing Daddy Richard's calculator and it's just not that easy to make the maths add up.

Hold on to your Carol Vorderman's; here we go:

If there are sixty-two million people in Great Britain, and let's guess that 16% are 16 or under (that's about right), then £100 a week each for everyone costs: (62m x 84% x 100 x 52) two hundred and seventy-one billion pounds.

If the average salary is twenty-five thousand pounds (pdf), and twenty-eight million people (pdf) are in employment, then the total "earnings" of the country is: (25 x 1000 x 28 x 1,000,000) seven hundred billion quid.

So you'd need a tax rate of 39% just to break even.

But what you've got to remember is that the Government DOESN'T just break even on the tax and benefits, it pays for stuff like the NHS and schools and the army out that tax too.

Estimating a bit here, from last year's red book (pdf), let's say the Government CURRENTLY hopes to get in something two hundred and fifty billion from taxes on earnings (income tax and national insurance). It then spends say a hundred and forty billion of that on benefits (which it wouldn't have to do) and a further seventeen billion on tax credits (which would go) leaving it with net money coming in of about ninety-three billion pounds, so that's money you'd still have to raise or else cut something truly eye-watering.

Ninety-three is a bit more than 13% of seven hundred, so you're looking at a "flat tax" tax rate of (39 + 13) more than 52%.

Ouch.

Actually, there IS a bit of a fix for that: those taxes on earnings include the EMPLOYERS' share of National Insurance (that thing that the Conservatories always call the "jobs tax"). Well, if you DON'T abolish the Employer's National Insurance when you create the flat tax, then you can use that to trim the flat rate down a little, to maybe somewhere nearer 45%.

But that's still quite a HARSH tax rate if you are trying to encourage people that work is worthwhile. Almost every other penny they earn goes to the taxman. And it doesn't give you a lot of room for adding a Local Income Tax on top, either.

And I agree, £100 a week DOESN'T sound a lot to live on, either, particularly when you include the cost of housing (although it would be a bit easier for couples who get two lots of £100). Just think about the GRIEF that the Coalition are getting for limiting housing benefit to £400 a week, and then ponder what it might be like to tell people it will be abolished altogether!

Ouch again!

In pure cash terms, almost everyone IN WORK who earns LESS than the National Average would be better off; almost everyone who earns MORE than the National Average would be WORSE off, and perhaps substantially, although ironically the very highest earners (currently paying 50% tax plus 2% NI and with their personal allowance withdrawn) would actually be better off again. A lot of people on benefits could be a good bit better off; but a lot of people could be worse off too – the system is just too complicated to know without a lot of time on the Treasury Master Computer Brain to work it out.

Here, though, is where I think I depart from Mr Drunken Swerve.

If SOME people do not want to work, if they think they can survive on £100 a week… I say good luck to 'em.

My aim is to LIBERATE people. Primarily, I want to liberate them from the ELEPHANT TRAP BENEFIT TRAP that means that it is often worth more to remain stuck in dependency than to go out and better yourself.

What I DON'T want to do is replace one form of TYRANNY with another: to replace dependency on State handouts with some Puritan ideal of compulsory work.

Now, I realise there IS a risk involved in this: if TOO many people decide that work is too much trouble then the whole system will fall to bits. I have to rely on a good half of the population sticking with the British Work Ethic or it all goes kabloohey.

The way I see it, there will always be people who are not able to work: they might be ill or old or pregnant or caring for someone else or any number of things, and it's really not my BUSINESS to make some MORAL statement about whether they should or shouldn't be working.

This system would make sure that they are looked after. A bit.

Equally, there are always likely to be some people who are too lazy to be bothered or clever enough to work the system who want to skive off. And there ALWAYS WILL BE.

So let's not PRETEND that we can devise systems that can stop that. Particularly not systems that are going to have to be run by an underpaid, understaffed civil service. Making the system more COMPLICATED only helps the scammers – if the people OPERATING the system don't understand it (and at the moment it's so complicated that NO ONE understands it!) then how are they supposed to know when they are being conned?

You can't legislate laziness out of existence, nor can you be clever enough to put cleverest conmen off of cadging off the rest of us, at least not without SERIOUSLY penalising the people who really can't work and don't deserve to be punished for the p-taking of a very few others.

So, at the end of the day, I think I've convinced myself that I'm NOT turning into a Conservatory after all.

Which is a relief.

And which can only mean one thing: if I'm not becoming more Conservatory, then the Conservatories must be becoming more LIBERAL.

Maybe there's hope for this Coalition yet.



Now… what do I do with this nice RED LIGHT-SABRE that Mr Balloon has sent me?

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