A not terribly well strung together rant about the budget

If you take straight forward cash handouts out of the equation, child poverty has actually got far worse in the last ten years. That is disgusting for any government but surprising too for a Labour one, or at least it should be. The problem is, the labour movement has always been so obsessed with handouts that it has never understood how to really get people out of poverty. Increasing benefit is all well and good but what this budget actually does is decrease the motivation to work. If you are in a position where you could go back to work for a salary of £15k then this budget swings the balance towards staying away from work. If you never enter the labour force, you will never work your way up it onto a better wage.

It is disgusting that my niece is getting a tax hike on her pittance so that Gordon Brown can attempt to bribe me on my decent salary into thinking he is the a great guy to be the next PM. She lives in a rural area with very poor public transport and earns very little as the government has legalised her sub-minimum wage wages as part of a training scheme. The government have continually chipped away at public transport whilst pushing up living costs by continuing to subsidise second home owners coming into the area.

It is clear to me that Gordon Brown's motivation with this change in tax policy is simply to screw the politically disenfranchised generation he has worked so hard to create, in order to feather his bed with the rest of us. It is despicable. But then that is the sort of man he is. His policies have consistently been born out of distaste and disapproval, that, sadly, is why so many who are still in the Labour Party like him.

Comments

[Tristan Mills]

The problem is, the labour movement has always been so obsessed with handouts that it has never understood how to really get people out of poverty.

That hits the nail on the head.
Redistribution is not the answer in itself. Some redistribution to provide support may be justified, but handouts in the way Labour likes will just create dependency on the state.

[George Beevor]

Tristan, thanks for your comment. I suspect that the motivation of many people in the Labour Party is a sort of quasi-maternal one. They actually require people to be dependant on them to maintain their heroic status in their heartlands.