Kosovarian ethnic cleansing....

Boris Johnson is quoted on the BBC as saying, in ref. to the Housing Benefits changes that George'n'Dave want to introduce, and which Labour claims will mean moving people out of their homes and even across the major cities like London,...

"What we will not see and we will not accept any kind of Kosovo-style social cleansing of London. "On my watch, you are not going to see thousands of families evicted from the place where they have been living and have put down roots."

Tory Ministers have been quick to jump on his Mayoral Bumblingness and a retraction of sorts has been issued by Boris...

"...taken out of context.. misquoted....didn't really mean it..."

Aye right. He meant it all right and Dave knows it's a shot across his bows. Boris means to get re-elected and the last thing he needs is homeless families being shuttled ftrom London borough to London burough looking for a home that is cheap enough to dump them in.

In any case other, less inhibited, Tories have accepted that the new policy will indeed mean evictions and misplaced internal refugees in our big cities. Mark Field, an inner London Tory MP said as much on Newsnight last night... see here  

Mr Field seems quite relaxed about forcing people out (what Boris calls "cleansing"). When asked if he expected a "migration out", he said "yes".

A lady called Theresa with 4 kids (2 in a very good local school) and a sick mother, who would have to move home and kids move school if her benefit was cut.
It's quite straightforward, quite open and quite disgusting.

When the arse of Theory meets the Guard Dog of Reality....

One little commented effect of the CSR is that it will be local councils, not the Torydem Government, that will have to implement many of the service and financial cuts implied in George Osborne's savage budgets.

Barnett Council was supposed to be the vanguard council for the Tory approach to this... Based on the "Easyjet" approach the "Easycouncil" confidently predicted "Easycuts".

But, as in many cases when the arse of theory meets the guard dog of reality, reality bites back, leaving the theory and the theorist badly frayed and bitten...

Click on Barnet, the barking dog for details...

It's no surprise that Barnet Council has admitted that it is actually costing more to arrange the "easycuts" than they can save....

I have to say, "I could have told you so....". Anyone with any experience of cutting budgets, whether in the private or public sector, would know that it easy to plan and promise savings, but it's much more difficult to deliver...

Growth..good for the coalition...?

Tonight's economic headlines report a higher-than-expected 0.8% rise in UK GDP in the 3rd Quarter. Up pops George Osborne on all the bulletins claiming credit: we done it and what's more we saved the UK from being Greece MK2.

Is that fair, or even true?

The coalition was elected in May and had its first budget in late June, so any effect on the economy will not yet have taken effect. That being the case, and insofar as economic outcomes are determined by politics, any economic growth this year has to be an outcome of policies enacted and implemented by the last Labour government.

The effects of the coalitions June budget and last week's CSR will only be felt in the 4Q 2010 or even early 2011, and the measurements of any success/failure will not become clear 'till much later than that.

Tax Research UK has a good (if frightening) analysis....

What to call them....

The coalition has been a puzzle to Labour and its other opponents in many ways, not least what to call them.

The coalition? Too bland.

The LibCons? The Condem coalition? Too contrived..

None seem to stick and none provide the sense that we have pinned them down to their essence.

I suggest the ToryDems or Torydems. It tells what they are: predominently Tory supported by the right wing of the Liberal Democrats. It is that Tory, Orange Book, wing of the Lib Dems that is propping up Dave'n'George, not the old "Liberal" wing, the people who thought that they were in a left-of-centre party....

Torydem. Think it'll stick....?

Who Remembers Selsdon Man?

The philosopher John Gray has an interesting angle on the Osborne cuts in the Guardian.

As well as pointing out that, for all her ferocious rhetoric, Margaret Thatcher did not achieve long-term cuts in public spending or, except temporarily,  reduce the Welfare State, he detects a more ruthess ambition in Dave'n'George.

In an interesting aside he compares their attitude to that of early the Edward Heath administration. Most people have forgotten that the early Heath was a cutter and slasher (at least in theory) and  a follower of the Selsdon Group. Heath's pre-Thatcher "Thatcherism" failed, his Premiership faltered on the first big miners strike and he is now no more than a footnote in recent history.

Mrs Thatcher herself did not dismantle the welfare State but now her acolytes from the Bullingdon Club are set to make another serious attempt to threaten the social glue that holds the UK together.

Cuts "Regressive" - Official!

Here's a couple of quotes "

Nick Clegg Apr 2010 IFS... "concluded that the Lib Dems’ plan is the most credible." 

Nick Clegg Oct 2010 IFS..... "distorted and a complete nonsense"

The Institute for Fiscal Studies (IFS) has been the Lib/Con coalition's think-tank of choice: Nick Clegg thinks (or thought, see above) that it was wonderful when it endorsed his plans. It is certainly one of the most respected organisations commenting on economic matters in the UK.  George Osborne was so impressed that he even poached Andrew Dilnot, the chair of the organisation, to take charge of his own creation, the Office for Budget Responsibility.

So when the IFS says George is lying, you have to sit up and listen. In the IFS presentations on the cuts, the IFS acting director, Carl Emmerson says that the claim by Osborne that the cuts are, at 19% of departmental budgets, less than the 20% Labour was committed to, is untrue. To quote;

"...But the new Government has already implemented cuts to spending in this
year, thereby reducing the base for Mr Osborne’s comparison. So, by 2014–15 departmental spending is forecast to be below the level implied by the plans set out in Labour’s last Budget. And because this is true, any like-for-like comparison of spending in “unprotected areas” would also be higher in 2014– 15 under the last Government’s plans than under the new Government’s plans.."

He also points out that the cuts are regressive

"....The Treasury’s modelling shows that the benefit measures announced yesterday will hit those in the bottom half of the income distribution more as a share of their income than those in the top half...."

and hit the poor hardest particularly poor children

"...benefits will be focussed more on pensioners and less on families with children....".

None of this is a surprise: I have no doubt that the cuts are as much idelogical as economically driven, they are too deep and too quick and the aim is to end the Welfare State as we know it. It appears more than two thirds of the population agree with me.

But there is one aspect I have found particularly hard to bear...and that is the unseemly gusto with which George Osborne announced the cuts and the cheers with which Tory/Lib Dem MPs greeted them. It is one thing to believe (wrongly IMO) that you have to make savage cuts: it’s quite another to do so with unbridled enthusiasm and little apparent thought for the practical result of your actions.

When hundreds of local authority social workers or care assistants are sacked and their clients suffer because of these cuts, and when benefits are denied the poorest and most deserving, we will remember those whoops of delight from the Lib/Tory coalition and understand the kind of people to whom we have given control of our society.

By then, unfortunately,  a lot of damage will have been done, damage that a future Labour Government will have to addresss and fix.....just as they had to salvage civil society after the savagery of Thatcher....... plus ca change...

For what doth it profit a man......

Vince Cable has been heard singing in his bath, the old Bob Dylan song with added Lib Dem lyrics...

"Tell me, how many promises can one man break, before he's a Tory stooge..."