The Return of the Undeserving Poor.....

Two days ago I posted this, about the Tory Child Benefit fiasco. I ended the post like this;

"All the Conservative cries of "fairness" are just a diversion from their long term ideoligical nirvana: less tax for the rich, more wealth for the few, keep the middle classes in a balance of comfort and fear, add a few crumbs of conscience money to make it look as if you "care", and let the poor manage how they can."

I almost added a flourish about the "return of the undeserving poor", but I thought that it would be too ridiculous: even the Tories wouldn't be so crass as to talk like that...
 
Imagine my surprise when watching Newsnight that very night and I saw a senior LibCon Minister, Jeremy Hunt, use exactly that language. Mr Hunt said: "If you are on benefits you shouldn't have children, or any more children. Us posh folk are giving you charity and you better be grateful and well behaved. Just watch it."
 
I paraphrase of course, but that's the sense of his opinions. Cold charity and like it, the Tory gruel throughout the ages.
 
In the twenties my dad and his brothers, being too proud to wear the boots they got from the  parish, went to school barefoot. In the interim we have (should that be had?) made some progress and distributed benefits according to need, not by judgement against some middle class moral strictures about the deserving and undeserving poor. Now the finger-wagging parish, in the shape of our ConDem coalition, rears its head again. Dare I mention the workhouse?

Canada or Japan...?

A fascinating piece of journalism on the budget by Paul Mason and Jeremy Paxman on Newsnight last night.

Paul Mason showed a Treasury pie-chart of the factors producing growth in the economy for the last ten years, and then the same pie chart as a forecast for the budget period. In the budget forecast, the piece of the “pie” that previously represented “housing” is magically doubled to 20%, “investment” triples and, most bizarrely of all, the piece that represented “government spending” (about 25% of overall growth) has been replaced by a category called “exports”.

it’s here, at 25mins in to the programme;

In other words, the UK will grow by a growth in the housing market that is not yet evident in the figures or predictions, an investment boom (when banks are not lending and companies are not borrowing for investmemnt) and an export miracle that is not even a gren shoot in any economic model other than the governments.  There is absolutely no indication in any budget documents of how these changes will be achieved. And they are based on massive assumptions of changes in behaviour by individuals, companies and banks. Paul Mason made no attempt to explain it beyond saying that the government believed that Canada had used a similar model to get out of recession in the ’90s, but he looked as puzzled as I was watching him describe it……

The rest of the piece was a Paxman interview with a Japanese economist who said we were making exactly the same mistake they did in the 80s and they are only now coming out of recession…..”you don’t cut government spending when the private sector is deleveraging” were his words, and that is exactly what we are proposing to do…. he also mentioned an "economy in tailspin"...

TBH, it was quite frightening ....

Vince's Newsnight Cringe.....

Priceless Paxman interview with Vince Cable...

On Newsnight last night, Paxman asked Vince Cable a few gentle questions about when he changed his mind about the £6bn cuts announced by his partners yesterday, and about how friendly he is with George Osborne.

Cable, looking like a man who would rather be tied down naked in a pit full of stinging ants, replied with a complete lack of conviction that he was convinced by a first glance at the books and by the eloquence of the Governor of the Bank of England, and of course he and George had a perfectly good relationship....

Given that he is a Keyneseian and is deeply worried that early cuts are a real risk to the recovery, that he fears that we have cut too early and will cause a double dip recession, and that he regards George Osborne as practically economically illiterate, it's no wonder that poor old Vince looked grumpy and ill-at-ease.

Before the election he opposed early cuts because of the potential economic consequences for unemployment, growth, economic capacity, the availability of credit and its potential to damage us in the eyes of international money markets. For a politician who made his reputation on being right, being honest and being outspoken, swallowing his words is  a real dent to Cable's self-esteem. Being asked to publicly defend the cuts by a sneering Paxman must feel like torture.

It is obvious that Cable still believes what he said pre-election, that he fears the risk that is being run with the economy, that he has been blocked by Osborne in his bid to regulate the banks and that he instinctivley flinches with obvious Tory relish at the cuts.

Expect more dissafection from Cable.