Conservatives, Liberals and the cuts

Cameron and his Con-Dem buddies would have us believe that this is a government 'for the people and by the people'.Yet, let's take a look at some of the facts. In the recent statement outlining the details of the £6bn worth of savings in government spending, Osborne emphasised there would be no effect on frontline services.

Now, socialists throughout the last election were constantly arguing that this was untrue, but regrettably we failed to convince the electorate. Now let's take a look at how these cuts will affect people - for example, if we look at the prime minister's own constituency of Witney. Here the cuts to the local authority will only account for approximately 1.7% of funding - no great loss and residents will see little effect on services for the elderly, for the vulnerable or for the jobless. However, if we look at Harriet Harman's (the acting Opposition leader) constituency, we see that these cuts will amount to no less than 16.3% of fuding, simply because in that area they have more vulnerable people, more elderly, great social need and more unemployed.

Similarly, today on the Andrew Marr show, Ian Duncan Smith outlined how he was going to get Britain 'back to work'. But this new programme will have a budget that has automatically been cut by £535m before the Prequalification Questionnaires and Invitation to Tenders for new welfare to work programmes have been published. Of course, IDS has said that with new efficiencies he will 'force' private contractors to improve on their performance. Perhaps now is a good time to point out to IDS that if 10 people go for 3 jobs, that still leaves 7 people unemployed. Currently in the UK we have 2.6m people unemployed and if his figures are correct, these numbers will soon be joined by a further 1m people who were on IB and will now be seen as available for work. Against this, DWP advise that there are currently only 600,000 vacancies. Even if private contractors fill every one of those posts, it will still leave 2.9m unemployed.

Evidence once again that the Tories are a party for the rich and never for the working class.