Glenis and Ed out campaigning in Nottingham

 

Only two days to go and the Tories are desperately trying to get everybody to stay at home and not vote.  Of course they expect (and deserve) a going over on Thursday, but what worries them is coming third behind UKIP.  We have a special UKIP problem here in the East Midlands, of course.  The top candidate on their list, and thus the only one who stands a chance of getting in, is not going to serve.  He's already campaigning for the parliamentary by-election in the Nottinghamshire seat of disgraced Tory Patrick Mercer - where I understand he got involved with a disabled Labour supporter yesterday.  To round off a poor day for Mr Helmer, his own party leader, interviewed by Paxman on Newsnight, blamed some of Mr H's stronger opinions on him being over 70 and therefore presumably in Farage's opinion ga-ga.

 

 

 

Voting on Thursday is about more than ensuring embarrassment for Cameron and disappointment for Mr Helmer.  It's about standing up for the rights of ordinary people all across Europe - the rights to travel, the rights to be treated fairly at work, the right to live or work abroad if you chose, and the fundamental right to be treated by the elite as a human being whose opinion actually counts.

Labour's response to Osborne's Budget

Ed Balls says:

“George Osborne boasted once again today that everything was going well. Perhaps it is for the people he mixes with. But in the real world, people on middle and low incomes are still not feeling any recovery. And after today’s Budget, they still won’t be feeling it. Wages are down £1,600 a year since David Cameron came to office. And independent forecasts today showed people will be worse off at next year’s election than in 2010.

 

 

So it’s official: You’re worse off under the Tories. Yet there was no action in the Budget to deal with this cost-of-living crisis. No energy prices freeze to help pensioners and families struggling with soaring bills. No help for families with rising childcare costs this side of the election. And no action to get young people stuck on the dole into paid work. Despite all the hype, the Budget totally failed to deliver, except for the very richest who will still get a £3billion a year tax cut. And when Ed Miliband challenged David Cameron and the Chancellor in the Commons, they refused to rule out giving millionaires another tax cut.

Specifically...

 

Real wages are forecast to fall by 5.6% over the Parliament meaning people will be worse off in 2015 than when David Cameron came to power.

Three years of flat-lining and falling living standards has led to more borrowing than planned to pay for the costs of economic failure.

 Let's hope the measures in this Budget are better than the Government's Export Enterprise Finance Guarantee Scheme which helped just five firms before it folded.

 

It looks like the dear old threepenny bit.  Coincidentally, in real terms it will have about the same purchasing power.

The Budget failed to cap pension fees and charges which leave pensioners paying up to £230,000 over their lifetimes.



 

In summary...





The Democratic Deficit

Local councils were created to provide local services for local people.  Their origins date back to at least the Anglo Saxon era.  The idea, essentially, was that local people would vote for local representatives because they agreed with what they had to say about local needs.  If there were no great needs, then the councils needed to raise less money.  If there were great needs, then a majority vote of local people effectively endorsed a bigger budget.

For thirty years or more, governments of all persuasions - yes, including New Labour - have cut back local decision-making and, to a greater or lesser extent, local revenue raising.  David Cameron hasn't achieved much in his single term prime ministership but he has blown a truly massive hole in the concept of local democracy.

* The Tory-led Government has imposed the biggest funding reductions in the public sector on local councils.  Funding for local government has been cut by 40% over this Parliament, with councils having to reduce their budgets by a total of £20 billion by 2015/16.

* David Cameron and Eric Pickles are distributing these massive cuts unfairly – hitting those that can afford it least the hardest. It is scandalous that the areas with the greatest need are shouldering the largest reductions in central government funding.

* The Prime Minister says “we’re all in this together”, but his local authority of West Oxfordshire – one of the least deprived areas in the country (ranked 316 out of 325 in the indices of multiple deprivation) – is getting an increase in spending power of 3.1% in 2013/14, while most places faced significant cuts.

* The most recent Local Government Financial Settlement means that over this Parliament – between 2010-11 and 2015-16 – the ten most deprived areas will have had their spending power cut by ten times the amount of the ten least deprived areas.

* The Government is hitting the poorest people in those communities too. Eric Pickles lectures councils and says they have a “moral duty” not to increase council tax bills this year, but at the same time he has dropped his own council tax bombshell on people on the lowest incomes. 

* At a time when carers, the disabled, single mums, war widows and veterans are having to pay more council tax and the hated bedroom tax, the Prime Minister refuses to rule out cutting taxes for millionaires yet again. It tells you all you need to know about whose side he is on.

Cameron pledges the rich will pay less tax

 

 Michael Dugher, MP for Barnsley East and Labour's Shadow Minister for the Cabinet Office, condemns David Cameron's pre-election speech on the Andrew Marr Show:

 

"David Cameron wants to be judged on his record.  Families are £1,600 a year worse off and Cameron showed once again he has no answers to the cost-of-living crisis facing millions of families across Britain.

 

"Rather than helping hard-working families, David Cameron is again choosing to stand up for just a privileged few at the top.

 

"In 2013, Cameron gave people earning over £150,000 a year a big tax cut.  Now he's paving the way for yet another cut to the top rate of tax, a further tax giveaway for millionaires and the top Tory donors who bankroll Cameron's Conservative party.

 

"Under David Cameron millionaires get tax cuts while hard working people are worse off.  Cameron's tetchy interview underlined that he is out of touch with the country and that he has no answers to Britain's cost-of-living crisis."

 

Fighting the same battle

David F sent me this quote:

"If Margaret Thatcher is re-elected as prime minister on Thursday, I warn you. I warn you that you will have pain–when healing and relief depend upon payment.
I warn you that you will have ignorance–when talents are untended and wits are wasted, when learning is a privilege and not a right.
I warn you that you will have poverty–when pensions slip and benefits are whittled away by a government that won’t pay in an economy that can’t pay.
I warn you that you will be cold–when fuel charges are used as a tax system that the rich don’t notice and the poor can’t afford.
I warn you that you must not expect work–when many cannot spend, more will not be able to earn. When they don’t earn, they don’t spend. When they don’t spend, work dies.
I warn you not to go into the streets alone after dark or into the streets in large crowds of protest in the light.

"I warn you that you will be quiet–when the curfew of fear and the gibbet of unemployment make you obedient.
I warn you that you will have defence of a sort–with a risk and at a price that passes all understanding.
I warn you that you will be home-bound–when fares and transport bills kill leisure and lock you up.
I warn you that you will borrow less–when credit, loans, mortgages and easy payments are refused to people on your melting income.
If Margaret Thatcher wins on Thursday–
- I warn you not to be ordinary
- I warn you not to be young
- I warn you not to fall ill
- I warn you not to get old."

It was made by Neil Kinnock, in Bridgend, on Tuesday June 7 1983.  It serves as a reminder just how good Kinnock was at making speeches - and why the Right Wing Press simply had to dub him the Welsh Windbag.  It also reminds us how, thirty years on, we are still fighting the same battle.

Substitute David Cameron or The Coalition for 'Margaret Thatcher', change the date to Thursday May 7 2015, and the rest holds as true today as it did in 1983.