Sunday, November 17, 2013

Cameron, Osborne and Carney Must Think We're Barmy!

Austerity is here permanently for you 'plebs'
says David Cameron
Cameron's natural instincts to suck up to big business was evident last week when Mr Cameron gave a speech at the Lord Mayor's banquet where he said that "austerity was permanent". It isn't even the fact that Cameron hails from a long line of privilege and property and country estates, and has never wanted for a single thing in his whole existence on this Earth that people found so galling and so utterly offensive, it was the fact that there he was in white tie and tails, delivering his austerity speech to a room full of bankers, hedge funders, big business, equity companies and all manner of City types stood behind a gold lectern to a room full of privileged people who had just dined on the very best fillet of beef with a celebration of British mushrooms washed down by the finest wines and champagnes, while standing next to the Lord Mayor bedecked in her gold chains of office sitting on her gold throne with plush red velvet upholstery.That dinner that 'our Dave scoffed down' could have probably paid the food bill for a family of four for a whole week.  It was like something out of a Dickens novel and so out of touch is David Cameron and his advisers that none of them even thought about, let alone recognised the insulting nature and the paradox of such thoughtless actions.

Once again while the leader of the opposition Ed Miliband was out and about meeting and talking to ordinary people and owners of small businesses about the things that concern them and worry them.  As well as bringing a debate and a vote to parliament on energy prices and trying to get a vote through parliament to force the government to abolish their ill thought through bedroom tax which is causing such despair and pain to nearly three quarters of a million people.

The leader of the opposition Ed Miliband has successfully driven energy costs right up to the top of the agenda, if it were not for Mr Miliband and Labour, the prime minister David Cameron and the Tory Coalition would not have done a single thing, they would have just sat back and allowed the energy conglomerates to put energy prices up just the same as they have done every year. All Cameron has done in previous years is have the energy bosses in for coffee and biscuits at the taxpayers expense, waffle about cooperation and self regulation and that's it the energy bosses go on their way free to charge us what they like.

The water companies only came into Cameron's and the government's panicked sights when Ed Miliband gave an interview to a local paper mentioning them see HERE.
Never has it been clearer that the general public want and need a government that is capable of standing up for the public against big business and the energy conglomerates which have been ripping us off for years. This government is not the Coalition and it is certainly not the Tories who are in cahoots with big business as we can see 'our Dave'  is never more comfortable than when he is sucking up to big business.

Living standards are being purposefully driven down by Cameron and his government in order to falsify the unemployment figures so that his mates the businessmen can employ two people for the price of one.
While Ed Miliband was trying to raise the problem of the cost of living crisis for ordinary people Cameron was out wining and dining the very people who are purposefully keeping wages low. Much the same as the other week when Miliband was offering his head on a platter to be kicked by the energy companies while trying to get the government to act on energy costs, Cameron's chancellor, George osborne was busy in the EU making arrangements to take the EU to court on behalf of Britain's bankers to help safeguard their huge bonuses and is now forcing the taxpayer to pay over a million pounds in bankers legal fees.

And we, the people who work and keep this country going and we the people, the nurses, the doctors, the cleaners, the school dinner ladies, the road sweepers, the factory workers, the local authority workers etc who NEVER caused this problem caused by the bankers greed who helped crippled the global economy, are told that we must face a lifetime of austerity and what is more we must pay to bail the banks out and then pay again for their legal fees while Tory chancellor George Osborne fights their case in the law courts so they can keep their huge salaries and massive bankers bonuses.  What do you expect when this particular government and this particular Tory party are in the pockets of big business, the corporations, the energy conglomerates, many make financial donations to the Conservative party, why wouldn't they scratch each others backs? The British Conservative party is just the political wing of the establishment; big business, the corporations, the energy conglomerates, the multinationals, the private healthcare companies and the banks and hedge funds! See HERE

You couldn't really make it up.

Also during last week we are forced to listen to George Osborne's political sidekick of a Governor of the Bank of England telling us our glasses are all half full and the 'recovery' has taken hold because? Well he said so, based on his predictions - can you actually believe that? (It's not as if the Bank of England's predictions have even come true in the past.)

What 'recovery' is Carney talking about?

This sudden and highly suspect fall in inflation is a misnomer too, they say the price of food has gone down, well would someone tell that to the supermarkets because my bill is rising week upon week. Since the horsemeat scandal the price of meat has rocketed and not fallen back to previous prices there is no reason for this either, it's the supermarkets making money out of us another rip-off. Everything in my shopping basket is more expensive than it was a year ago.

Unemployment is falling and employment is rising we are told - really?

The faux rise in employment is a deception and a deception of the British people by this their government on a massive scale

There are several reasons for the rise in employment and none of them good. Mainly these 'new' jobs which are supposed to be being created are mainly public sector jobs being reclassified as private sector jobs and these job transfers are mainly taking place in education and the NHS. Take a cursory look at companies like Care UK and Virgin Care, they have taken over huge swathes of NHS contracts and staff and suddenly those NHS staff who worked for the public sector are now classed private sector and the government is using these figures to tell us that employment is rising and that 1.4 million 'new' jobs are being created, they are not it is a blatant lie, the public are being deliberately misled. (If the staff object to being taken over by the private sector they are told to resign.)

Then there is deception of falling unemployment - it is not falling, in fact, I would bet my house that unemployment has actually been rising this past year and I say this for several indisputable reasons:

Workfare - The government are forcing thousands of people onto workfare contracts, people are being forced to work full-time for their JSA and these people are NOT counted on the unemployment register. According to the Labour Market's Statistics the number of people on government supported training and employment programmes and classified as being in 'employment' rose by 8000 to 168,000. This is the highest number in unpaid work since 1998. This means that over half of the 47,000 the ONS and the government say that unemployment has fallen are currently on unpaid workfare programmes. You can see how eax ch month these figures are being deliberately distorted. Adding 168,000 to the jobless tally suddenly gives a different picture to the true state of the economy and unemployment in this country!
If people do not enter these full-time unpaid work schemes (which prevent them looking for properly paid full-time work) then their job seekers allowance is sanctioned, meaning it;s cut. Thousands have been sanctioned because they have attended job interviews and they have seen their JSA cut, which is why the claimant count is falling. The government Department Work and Pensions (Iain Duncan-Smith) are literally forcing people off of the unemployment register in order to deceive the public.

Zero hour contracts - over a million people on zero hour contracts are classed as working even though they may not earn any pay for weeks. They are deliberately left off  unemployment register by the Office National statistics (ONS) because even though they may not earn any wages for weeks they are still technically classed as 'employed' and are prevented from claiming JSA by the DWP. It is the government (DWP) who classify those on zero hour contracts as working, so do not forward the numbers to the ONS.
These workers cover care workers who often wait for work or report for work and are told on the day they report for work that there is no work for them at that time.

Self Employment - rising numbers of people being pushed into self-employment by jobcentres are masking the true state of the jobs market and these people are not counted on the unemployment register, even though they may not be earning a penny and they are also prevented from claiming JSA, or any other benefits, because they are technically classed as working when they are not. These people are labourers, builders, temps, hairdressers, shop workers etc. There has been a 9% rise in self-employed people since the start of the recession in 2008.

Part-time work and underemployment -  there is another rise in the number of part-time workers who would otherwise work full-time but cannot find full-time work, these people are not counted on the unemployment register, they are 'underemployed' and are now being forced to find hours of work (which are often not there ) or risk losing part or all of their tax credits. This is another way the government (DWP) is deliberately misleading the public over those claiming benefits count.

UK 'Unemployment Fall' masks Plight of Unemployed 50 year Olds - More than 400,000 people aged over 50 in the UK who are registered as unemployed (according to the latest labour market data). These people are classed as long-term unemployed and are now under threat of sanctions by the government (DWP) of having their JSA removed if they do not either attend the Jobcentre for 30 hours per week spread over five days per week, or pick up litter on the streets for 30 hours per week for their JSA, which is between £56.80 and £71.70 per week according to government figures. Hopefully it will not be your mother, father, or grandparent treated in this fashion in order to help this government falsify data and mislead the public.


Out of the jobs which are being created most are low waged so the employer can treat his workers like some kind of BOG-OF *buy one get one free* or because they pay terrible wages (which the taxpayer is forced to subsidise through tax credits) employers can afford to hire two people for the price of one. Wages have been falling for 40 out of the 41 months David Cameron and the Tory Coalition have been in power and this is not by accident, it is by design!

None of which is good for the economy, now the Mark Carney can waffle on about glasses half full if he wants to, but it is the real people out here who will tell him when the economy is doing well and thus far there is NO recovery for us and until all of the above changes, there will be no proper and sustained recovery. if people are being affected badly by the cost of living crisis and are forced into low paid jobs and workfare schemes etc because at the end of the day it is just a matter of simple economics of supply and demand. If people are on low wages and struggling to pay their bills and are already using credit on cards and on loans from payday lenders, how are they going to buy things in the shops? Already last week in what went widely unreported there are signs of a consumer slowdown, which do not quite fit in with Mark Carney's overly optimistic view of the economy, in fact Carney did not even mention the 0.7% surprise fall in retail sales! If people have no spare money, they either tighten their belts and do not spend, or they simply cannot spend or they borrow to spend and all three spell disaster for a weak economy and the UK economy is weak, because this false recovery is built of misleading unemployment data.

What Mark Carney did not say last week was eight important and worrying factors with the UK economy

  1. Retail sales fell by a surprise 0.7% in October 
  2. Fall in exports and rising imports widening trade gap 
  3. Manufacturing growth spurt fails to offset bad year for Britain's factories  
  4. Credit card debt rising 
  5. Use of payday loan companies rising 
  6. Personal debt is rising and threatening recovery
  7. [George Osborne's politically motivated] Housing Bubble
  8. And the true numbers of unemployed is being masked.


A really terrifying factor of this deception is that Carney has said once unemployment reaches Carney's magic 7%, he will raise interest rates! So in effect it looks like the government have been so successful in falsifying the true unemployment data that Carney's magic 7% unemployment will be met some 18 months sooner than expected. If Carney raises interest rates on the back of these misleading unemployment data, it will prove catastrophic for the UK economy, but if he doesn't raise interest rates people, (especially savers) are going to demand to know the reason why - leads me to this question: "Is Mark Carney, who chancellor George Osborne placed in position at the BoE as Governor, part of a political cover-up on the true state of unemployment in this country today? I see that Carney and the BoE are already trying to row back from the interest rate problem.

The only reason we have a little growth is because of the utter insanity of Osborne trying to buck the housing market with his Help to Buy and Funding for Lending schemes. These are driving a debt fueled false 'recovery' built on consumer spending which is built on credit.
The chancellor has virtually given 95% mortgages underwritten by the taxpayers to people who cannot afford to live and save for a deposit at the same time. If they cannot afford to live and save for a deposit at the same time then they certainly cannot afford a mortgage.
He has sanctioned people who already own their own houses who want to trade up and is underwriting their mortgages up to £600,000. Osborne is already said to be going to borrow a further £248bn in just five years, (more than the previous Labour government did in their entire 13 years), how much more will he have to borrow by underwriting mortgages? Bearing in mind Osborne has already lost the UK our triple A status which makes our borrowing more expensive.

None of which are helping first time buyers (which the market depends upon), Osborne is causing the price of houses to rise out of control, especially in London and the south east, but house prices in general across the country are now starting to rise as people gradually push out from London and the south east in order to get and affordable property.

What will happen to all these people who are already overstretching themselves to buy a house under the government HTB and Funding for Lending schemes if interest rates rise next year as unemployment falsely falls to 7%? If the bubble bursts because people will no longer be able to afford houses, then thousands of people are going to be left struggling to pay mortgages which are in negative equity - it is the same old story'

A return to Tory boom and bust! George Osborne hasn't learned a thing and neither have the people clamouring for mortgages borrowing money from the government they cannot afford to use as deposits for mortgages on property they cannot afford.

It will be 2008 all over again (only much worse) and this time it will be entirely the fault of George Osborne, David Cameron, Nick Clegg and the Conservative Coalition government because it is them that have deliberately sparked a housing bubble by underwriting loans and subsidising the private sector construction industry with taxpayers money. What will happen if the government who is acting as guarantor for thousands of mortgages and loans suddenly starts having to cough up for people that have defaulted on their mortgages and loans? It means of course that we the taxpayer will have to pay to bail them out.

Osborne was meant to be rebalancing the economy but it is as far from being rebalanced as we are from the sun and we are being kept in the dark about the true state of this economy.

Yet where did the Governor of the Bank of England Mark Carney mention any of this in his glass half full speech?



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