26 March 2012

Spring 2012 UK Budget - the last straw

I have cancelled my e-mails from the LibDems. I shall no longer deliver LibDem leaflets. This (by which I mean how the coalition govermnent has been behaving) is not merely different, it is in many respects the opposiite of what I voted for.

I confess: I voted for wealth redistribution, but from the likes of bankers with their generous salaries and eye-watering bonueses to families struggling to survive on minimum wage incomes or no income at all; not from poor people for whose meagre expenditure a 20% VAT on most goods is punitive; and from pensioners who are now being faced with a reduction in their tax allowance, to the richest peope whose top rate of income tax is being reduced from 50% to 45%, and who typically employ accountants in order to avoid paying tax.

I voted for public spending: on hospitals, nurseries, schools, colleges, universities, research and development, roads, railways, affordable housing.and a cleaner environment; not on futile wars overseas, or on a high prestige sports jamboree in London, or a high profile, high prestige, high cost, high speed railway line to carry rich people from their country homes in the Midlands to their fat-cat jobs in the City of London.

I voted for the proper funding of the National Health Service (NHS), and for a better system of care in the community for people with dementia / mental health issues. Instead, the Coalition government has set up mechanisms for privatising the NHS, and planned to create meaningless competition where there need be none.

I voted for access to higher education unfettered by tution fees. Instead, many universities will be charging tuition fees of GBP 9,000 p.a., so that students will leave university up to GBP 30,000 in debt.

I voted for job creation, so that there would not be another lost generation as there was under Margaret Thatcher. Instead, the unemployment figures in the UK are higher than ever, and youth unemployment has rocketed. Apprenticeships have been replaced by internships.

I voted for green safe energy, accompanied by a promise to block any attempt to return to nuclear power. Instead, EDF have been given the green light to start planning new nuclear power stations even before the reactors at Fukushima have fully cooled.

I voted for clean politics, not the grubby world of "donations for dinner", and the sordid cash for influence being offered by the (now former) Conservative Party Treasurer. Whilst it may not be fair to lay this charge at the feet of the Libdems, it is the LibDems who keep in power those for whom the charge is relevant.

I saw how coalition governments work in other countries, and thought that it would be the same in the UK: only goverment that needs to happen hapepns. I was willing, even excited, to give coalition politics the benefit of the doubt. However, the LibDems have shown themselves to be utterly complicit with the Conservative Party political agenda. How can I, or anyone, distinguish between the two parties in the coalition? The situation resembles that of the pigs at the end of George Orwell's novel 1984, who became indistinguishable from the farmer they overthrew.

2 comments:

Yaffa said...

Fabulous last line.

Yaffa said...

Fabulous last line.