Recovery: what recovery?

I wonder what George Osborne was thinking about when he boasting about the state of the UK economy last week.

It was the usual Osborne soundbites and oft-repeated slogans (“the government’s long term plan is working”) and yet everyone I seem to meet sees no evidence.

More people are indeed in work than ever before but then there are more people than ever before. Enormous numbers are self-employed earning an absolute pittance, something like five million people earn near the minimum wage and many of them cannot get the extra hours they need to attract tax credits – and public sector workers are seeing their pay cut in real terms every year. What recovery?

I was chatting to a guy this morning who wants to work full time but his employers won’t give him enough hours. And because he earns so little, he pays no income tax and because he can’t get the hours he likes he cant claim (see above). If that wasn’t enough, this Tory-led and Lib Dem enabled government is freezing, and so cutting, the worst off people’s tax credits. It’s almost as if Cameron and Osborne want to keep the lower orders in their places by making them worse off. Actually, it’s not almost at all. That’s exactly what they are doing. But if al least five million people are paying no income tax, how is Osborne getting his money? Maybe that’s why he has run up the national debt like never before?

Cameron’s only subjects at the moment seem to revolve around how ghastly foreign people are and Europe. It’s all he bangs on about, making increasingly angry speeches and threats taking him nearer and nearer to the fringes of right wing politics currently inhabited by Farage. Wouldn’t it be great if the prime minister had the same passion about the working poor? Don’t get me wrong, it is not just the Old Etonians and the other multimillionaires in the cabinet who seem to have no idea about the lives the rest of us live: the media doesn’t seem to grasp it either. And I want the Labour Party to shout a bit louder in support of those at the bottom. Not ‘scroungers’ or ‘spongers’. Those who work hard, play by the rules and want to do well in life.

I don’t think the EU is perfect either and certainly could be reformed but surely there are other priorities for Cameron and his government? Maybe he sees no votes in making poorer people less poor? Maybe he is right, given what I hear.

A start would surely be a push by the government to get employers to pay the living wage as opposed to the minimum wage because the latter is becoming the norm for many employers, the yardstick upon which they base their wages. It will not be possible to do this in one go or without government creating the right conditions but for how much longer will we condemn the working poor to a miserable life that involves nothing more than getting by? The incentives for employers will have to be tax and national insurance incentives and breaks for paying the living wage because many employers will not be able to afford it, but that’s not a reason for standing by and doing nothing.

Even this government recognises that low pay has to be countered by doing something and that’s why they have not scrapped tax credits, although they have undermined them, scrapped them to many and now frozen them for the poorest. They are topping up the pay of the poorest.

I honestly believe that politicians of all colours must do better and I include the Labour Party that I have supported all my life in that. In the area of low pay, it really does look like all the parties are the same.