What’s that Labour would make cuts too?

Yes as predicted the labour party have to start to come clean and admit softly that they too will make cuts if elected in 2015. This comes as no surprise to Marxists and those who have any sort of long term perspectives on the situation currently unfolding around the world. Labour as we know has wedded itself to the dictatorship of the market and thus will bow down to its mantra of austerity. So today’s news that labour will end universal welfare on winter fuel allowance comes as no surprise to me at all. As we know all labour controlled councils have also passed on huge tory cuts so this should have been a signal too. • ovary' Labour would cut winter fuel payments for the UK's richer older people if they won the next general election, Ed Balls is due to say. It would affect about 600,000 people over 61 who pay higher and top income tax rates - saving about £100m. But one pensioners' pressure group said it would undermine the principle that those who paid into the system were entitled to something in return. The shadow chancellor will also promise an "iron discipline on spending". Mr Balls is due to tell an audience at Thomson Reuters headquarters in London that Chancellor George Osborne's economic policies have "failed catastrophically" on growth, jobs and deficit reduction. 'Symbolic' He will say the policies will leave a future Labour government with "a very difficult inheritance", and will promise a "tough deficit reduction plan", coupled with more action to strengthen the economy. "The situation we will inherit will require a very different kind of Labour government to those which have gone before," he is due to say. "We will inherit a substantial deficit. We will have to govern with much less money around. We will need to show an iron discipline . Also there we have it what do those who preach to us Owen Jones and all that we need a labour government? Should we not be building an alternative instead of wasting our time trying to reclaim a party which in all fairness was never even ours? With references to the BBC http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-22748914

America next for the cuts agenda

Barack Obama, the US president, is set to unveil his fiscal 2012 budget on Monday, an election-year plan forged from conflicting needs to cut spending and stoke the economic recovery.

With vast crisis payments and sharply lower tax revenues making it difficult for the government to balance its books, Obama will set out an austerity plan that will help set the tone for next year's presidential race.

It is expected to address widespread public anger that the government is living beyond its means, detailing sweeping spending cuts while including some investments.

To square the circle, Obama's proposed budget for fiscal 2012 will seek to cut the record federal deficit, slashing energy subsidies for the poor and freeze public workers' pay.

But faced with high unemployment and an economic recovery that is still struggling to escape the orbit of the 2008 economic crisis, Obama will also give states more flexibility to pay for unemployment benefits.

Most of the projected savings would be achieved through two changes would require congressional approval.

At 2,448 pages and a weight of 4.5kg, the budget will contain something for most members of congress, but plenty more that will be loathed.

Congressional battle

On the eve of of the budget's publication, Republicans have been promoting ever-deeper spending cuts and criticising Obama for not doing enough.

Republicans argue spending cuts will help boost growth, while the Obama administration argues cuts are needed, but should be carefully measured for fear of derailing the recovery.

Obama's proposed budget cuts so far
The plan: Cut $1.1 trillion deficit over next 10 years

Two-thirds of savings to come from spending cuts and one-third from tax increases.

Defence budget: $78bn over five years
Pell Grant Programme: $100bn over a decade


For example, as Obama seeks $53bn for high-speed rail over the next few years, House Republicans are trying to pull back $2.5 bn that has already been promised.

Their budget also includes $1.1 bn cut to Head Start pre-kindergarten education programmes.

Bringing the two sides together is likely to be a long process that takes up most of the year. Congress has yet to approve the fiscal 2011 budget.

"There's no limit to the amount we're willing to cut to help get our economy moving again," said John Boehner, the House speaker, promising a $100bn cut in spending to the 2011 budget, with more to come.

But experts say cuts in discretionary spending, like those proposed by Obama and the Republicans, are just a drop in the fiscal bucket.

"This spending accounted for just one-fifth of total outlays last fiscal year," Augustine Faucher of Moody's Analytics says.

"Even if it had been entirely eliminated - wiping out the budgets for running the government, education, national parks and the like - the fiscal 2010 deficit still would have topped $600bn."

Growing fears

Fears are growing that the inability of the US to get its budget under control could eventually lead to a debt crisis and a possible default that would plunge the globe into crisis.

This week, Ben Bernanke, US Federal Reserve chairman, warned that dramatic change was inevitable.

"The question is whether these adjustments will take place through a careful and deliberative process that weighs priorities and gives people adequate time to adjust to changes ... [or] as a rapid and painful response to a looming or actual fiscal crisis," Bernanke said.

The US budget deficit is currently at the highest levels since World War II, and is projected to hit $1.48tn this year, or 9.8 per cent of gross domestic product, according to the congressional budget office.


This taken from Al jazeera's own english website.

This simply confirms my suspicions that the american president, president O'barma, is no left leaning socialist like the republicans try to paitn him as he is neo-conservative as they come. The guy who above is about to unveail this set of austerity cuts package cannot be socialist if he is. I never thought he was but this new announcement should set the record straight that he is just like any other careerist polititian only out for looking after the well off. nothing ever changes even in the free country of America. Cuts have found their way too. Maybe president O'barma has been spending far too much time with our own Mr cameron and has been convinced by the need for cuts too.

All this only further oppresses the working class's at the bottom of the scale who will feel these cuts the hardest. Just like in Britian this will have a huge impact on millions. I just hope the west, as it does seem to be a western agenda now to cut cut and cut more and more from the state giving to the private sector knows what it is doing and once its cut it cant be returned.

I do feel sorry for the american people now who like us in Britain will be feeling hardship for many years to come.

I do hope the socialist revolution is just around the corner. I've frankly had enough of this boom and bust rollercoaster. I'd quite like to get off now thanks

dramatic loss of police numbers to put country at risk

Alarming figures uncovered by Labour show ranks will plunge by 10,190 by 2013 as the Tory-led Coalition's budget squeeze intensifies.

The numbers look scarey and rightly so. THis is no small feet. This is a large amount of the front line officers being made redundant or moved elsewhere. THis is worrying news i feel as we enter another decade with huge major public events like the 2012 Olympics in London and the Royal wedding to name but a few. To have this dramatic loss in officers on the streets is not only worrying to the public for their safety but the countries tourism may end up falling due to tourists not feeling as safe as perhaps they once did.

Now i'm not a huge fan of the police as it goes. Their recent record on our streets back in December at the student tuitian fees protests and back a few years to the G20 protests when poor Ian Tomlison lost his life at the hands of a police officer. At last years student protests we will remember poor Alfie Meadows who suffered bleeding on the brain due to being battered savagely over the head by a police baton.

Now this is not a rant about the police and their heavy handed tactics but just outlining my thoughts recently on them. But i do still feel despite all this that removing officers from the street wont benifit us in the long run. People like to feel safe on their streets and in their homes and this decision by this tory lead government will not help this feeling of insecurity in their own country.

I myself as a disabled person like to know there is the access of the police to protect us if i need to call upon them for any reason at all. As i am perhaps more vunrable than others in society being visually impaired i perhaps feel the police are more important to me than others.

So these cuts to police spending and front line services will be putting the country further at risk from attacks of terrorism and other such major criminal offences we hear about every day.

Even the police as they are at the moment are over stretched, when my mum tried to contact them to report a intimadation from someone else she was told no one could take her report right now as they didnt have enough units to deal with the problem. If this is how it is now, how is it going to be like after these huge policing cuts ?

why not much talk of the VAT rise in Jan ?

To me this is very important, will affect each and everyone of us. Rich or poor. Probably poor more so as they have little disposable income anyway to start with. But i know we have all the student tuitian fees debarcle which i have blogged time after time on but this will be the next bomb shell the condems will land on us for sure.

Vat from January will be rising from its current position of 17.5% to 20%. That extra few percent could tip things over the edge for people. NOt only will this cripple consumer spending confidence it will also have an affect with putting business's out of business as they tryt o compete with added pressures of putting up VAT.

The last Labour government dropped the VAT percent down to 15%. This did little to the naked eye it seemed but it did boost spending for a little bit. Combined with schemes like teh car scrapage scheme and the boiler scrapage schemes this helped a bit of growth appear in the economy.

The choice of the coalition to raise this figure to 20% will not help consumer spending confidence and will hurt a lot of people most motably the poorest in society who struggle to make ends meet as it is.

I am fully aware that if labour had been in power now they also wantedto put up VAT. This was one of Alastair Darlings plans. I feel both parties who are and would have been in power are wrong and lowering tax's at this time on goods that are essential woudl help people out a bit and lessen the squeeze that there is on people right now.

The rise in VAT will again hit families the hardest i feel as they have the biggest weekly outgoings with feeding a family of 4 for example. Food and petrol prices are already going up alarmingly quickly and this will only further put people under the strain.

I just thought i'd throw the VAT debate back into the ring as over christmas and the holidays people better make the most of the rate of VAT as it will go up in January as i have outlined above.