More good news today from the government: they are spending extra money on flood defences after last year’s heartbreaking events around the country and locally here in Somerset. Well done, Messrs Cameron and Clegg! That will give a great lift to the poor victims who hopefully won’t see their properties flooded and ruined again. Except that this is not well done to those snake oil salesmen: this is ‘extra’ money that was announced last year and still means the government is spending significantly less on flood prevention than it was before the cuts.
It’s every day now. Some big announcement on extra funding for this, the next day extra funding for that. Monday it was money for transport, today it was for flooding, tomorrow it will be a re-announcement of the extra NHS spending, a third of which was already within the NHS budget. Confused? If the answer is yes, then Cameron and co will be laughing their heads off.
We are hearing two apparently contradictory stories from the government, one of which must be a lie. Firstly, we are told that public spending is being slashed in order to cut the budget deficit, although it’s actually increasing again now and this lot have run up more debt in four years than the previous one did in 13, which included the worldwide crash. What’s Osborne’s excuse? Secondly, every time something happens, Cameron and co tell us that more is being spent on things than ever before. The NHS? Well, they’ve increased funding. Transport? They’ve increased the funding for that too. And now flooding? We’re investing more than ever before. To which I reply, yeah right. And why do they say it? Because the public likes to see their money invested wisely in things that matter to them.
You would think that the public were four square behind Osborne’s failed policy of austerity if you read the papers, but that’s not what I see in a world of zero hour contracts and minimum wage part time workers. I see the exact opposite.
We will see much more of the spending promises between now and next June and we will be expected to swallow Osborne’s line that “I have no plans to increase VAT.” Phew! That’s a relief then. Luckily, I had completely forgotten he said that in 2010 just before the General Election. Funny that.
I wrote yesterday about the sheer cynicism of politics and we saw more of it today, as we shall see tomorrow in Osborne’s budget, or as he will call it ‘The Autumn Statement’. He will dwell on what he sees as the good bits, like a recovery that few of us are feeling (quite the opposite, actually), boasting about the new poverty paid jobs and the army of newly self-employed people who are, in many instances, worse off than if they were working for the minimum wage.
So it will be spend, spend, spend tomorrow as the stench of bullshit wafts around the House of Commons. Smart man, George Osborne, but not smart enough to convince all of us that his ‘long term economic plan’ is anything other than a work of fiction and that the real economy, fuelled once more by debt, is set to tank once the election is over.
They don’t want to spend more. They want to take a massive axe to the things that we hold dear. They just don’t want to tell us just yet.
