Well, seeing as how Labour weren’t up to much of a response to the Osborne Budget, the BBC obviously felt that they needed to step up to the challenge. All day they have been running the following attack line…
Budget 2015: Squeeze to hit 13m families, says IFS
And below the headline this..
Thirteen million UK families will lose £260 a year on average because of the Budget’s tax and benefits changes, says the Institute for Fiscal Studies (IFS).
Well, the IFS is entitled it its opinion, of course, but it might be nice of the BBC to preface such with the qualification that the IFS swings to the Left. Furthermore, even the left-biased IFS caveat their claims with words like “could” but the BBC discard that when it come to headline generation and soundbites for their news bulletins.
And, to use Mr Balls’ famous quote – so what?
John in cheshire…. would it be possible for you to expand on your supreme words of wisdom?
I refer you to freaky bacon below.
I too read the figure of 13 million in the Daily Mirror, admittedly I didn’t delve very deeply as the Mirror makes me feel queasy. However I couldn’t find the proverbial quotation marks from the IFS as a statement of fact. The BBC referred to the IFS as a ‘ the respected IFS’ not ‘the qualified IFS’ or the IFS’s standing in the day today importance of financial ‘wizardry’ … and there is the truth in plain sight that few will ever see or understand.
How have we got to the point where 13 million families are dependent on benefits? What happened to self reliance?
Agree.
Firstly what is the definition of families ; is it the nuclear family , extended family , widowed family , Mafia family etc ?
Is a girl with one offspring described as a family ? If she has two , three , four or more is that a family ?
A gypsy camp ; is that one family , or several ?
Does it include families that are split — one half in the UK , the other in ,for example Poland ?
Does it include families in which the main breadwinner or potential breadwinner could get a job but doesn’t ?
Basically I’m looking to see if ther are the deserving poor and undeserving poor .
i am a big fan of James Bartholomew, whose book, “the Welfare State we’re in” is a must read for anyone right of centre.
his analysis is that this budget represents a cultural shift.
the IFS and the BBC just don’t get it. It’s beyond their entrenched left wing thinking.
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/politics/11727501/Budget-2015-turning-Benefits-Street-into-a-dead-end.html
The IFS analysis is hardly surprising . Remember that Osborne was implementing the pledge to cut welfare spending by £12 billion a year . How are you going to do that without disproportionately hitting the poorer end of the spectrum when things like pensions have been made off limits? People were aware of this at the election and voted for it. BBC and Guardian please take note.
A second problem is that tax credits have become one of the major out of control areas of welfare spending. They were an ill considered Gordon Brown initiative unless you believe that they were deliberately intended to create a client class of labour voters. In effect they have encouraged low productivity /inefficient employers to keep wages down because the government would subsidise them. In-work tax credits have been a factor in Britains continuing poor productivity record and a pull factor in EU immigration. Both politically and from an economy perspective tax credits must be phased out.
The only other option was to cut taxes more aggressively. Given that Osborne wanted to reduce spending at a more moderate rate than he projected last March, this option was ruled out for him. So, it was a very political budget. But it was framed by a consummate politician after all.
If it affects 13 million families, average family = 4.4 people (2 Adults, 2.4 kids), 13 million x 4.4 = 57.2 million which is almost the ‘official’ population of the UK?
What a load of shite as usual.
File beside Lies Douche Gaza reports.
We need to go back to means testing and tie it to a nationality test. If they don’t speak English at least at GCSE Grade C then why are we wasting money on them? Should we sterilise the poor. Sir Keith Joesph was right on this?
Why am I paying axes on dumb people who are to poor to realise they are stupid and unproductive and should not reproduce.
That post was not by me . A troll using that name .
Keep on trolling lol
BBC news 10pm Friday evening interviewed a single mother with 8 kids. She got, I seem to recall, £500 a week in benefits, a figure that the budget will cut. The great unmentionable in this debate is that welfare encourages this kind of behaviour. We have to hope that once these irresponsible people have such incentives removed or reduced they will think twice before having large numbers of kids, especially when they are not in a stable long term partnership.