Have you read ‘The Little Prince’? It is a book aimed at children and adults alike written by Antoine de Saint-Exupery a French pilot and is supposedly based upon the hallucinations he experienced whilst almost dying of thirst following his crash in North Africa in the early 1930’s. I will not spoil the story but it is a lesson to adults not to stop asking questions and if you have do not stifle the desire in your children. What’s this got to do with this government and their misogynist, elitist, superiority complex infested tendencies based upon ignorance and spurious science I hear you contemplate? Well a lot and not much really. On the one hand this budget like every other budget and policy they try to implement requires us to accept it or fear the consequences of physically challenging it. On the other if you believe the propaganda about austerity being required to cull poor people and perceive only ‘hard’ workers as admirable then asking questions about reality is superfluous. I mean why ask a question if you are only looking for a specific answer because the chances are you already ‘know’.
So to the nitty gritty (aka eugenics) of the austerity packages this Chancellor and his chums inflict upon others but will never be able to empathise with or understand.
- £9 Living Wage by 2020 is a joke. A 40 hour week will equate to £1440 a month. To put in to context that is Iain Duncan Smith’s bill for polishing his head. It is a re branding of New Labour’s Minimum Wage and adds nothing new apart from tricking the less politically astute in to the con.
- Tax credits limited to first two children. A form of eugenics that will punish the poor for having children whilst enabling the wealthy to have no such restrictions. Social engineering of the most elitist and sneering kind.
- Housing benefit removed for 18-21 year olds. Those young people who do not go to university ie the less well off will be forced to live with parents/guardians if their incomes are too low and thus restrict the independence of the poorest.
- Inheritance tax to be abolished on all properties under £1 million. What about those who do not own property? It widens the gap between the haves and have nots.
- Lowering of corporation tax by 1% will benefit big business over smaller businesses. Chancellor keeping promise to Tory donors.
- Wage squeeze for public sector workers for next 4 years. Another example of this government punishing the public for the greed of casino bankers. Further propaganda will be also used to play private and public sectors off against each other whilst ignoring those who are actually to blame. Smart trick for those who aren’t so smart?
- BBC to pay for licenses of over 75’s. They become even more Conservative friendly out of fear for upsetting government whilst we are conned they are left wing. Left of what?
The supreme trick though is to throw in some announcements that play with the populist vote but do not require too much analysis. They are:
- MOT’s to be removed from all new cars and motorcycles for first 4 years (instead of 3).
- Fuel duty to be suspended for next 6 months
So the Top Gear fanatics will be appeased whilst the vulnerable are robbed.
The Sheriff of Nottingham is back and don’t you forget it. Whereas the narrator survives his hallucinations in ‘The Little Prince’ I fear that for many in the twenty first century this will not be the case if this government has its way.
Douglas James
