EU Budget Farce

Forgive me if I treat David Cameron's boast of saving money from the EU with some scepticism. When our local services are likely to be cut by 28% in line with the cut in Local Government grants, a 3% increase in the EU budget is hardly to be celebrated. When 600 jobs may be lost among Armed Forces support staff at Catterick, local people should rebel at such EU profligacy.

Thanks in part to Tony Blair's spiteful hand back of our EU rebate as he was hounded out of office in 2007, this country will still be forking out £6.5bn every year to pay for the EU. What does that pay for? Among other things an increase in EU bureaucrats' entertainment budget! And the extraordinary thing is that the EU budget has never been properly audited. Millions are lost every year and the EU budget office fail every single year to account for it, leaving the EU with qualified accounts (i.e. inaccurate).

The Tories and Liberal Democrats should honour their pre-election promises and have a referendum on our EU membership. As the Germans are insisting on an amendment to the Lisbon Treaty to facilitate the latest Euro-zone bail out of failing economies like Greece and Portugal, the coalition has the perfect opportunity. After all it was part of the Con Dem coalition agreement that there no further powers would be handed to Europe without a referendum.

Will we now see the will of the majority of the people prevail and Britain at last throw off the shackles of EU membership? Don't hold your breath. How many other promises have the Con Dem coalition kept?

Politicians support Tax Avoidance

Yet again we have seen crocodile tears about opposing tax avoidance. The chancellor George Osbourne, whilst casually throwing an additional one million people onto the dole, claimed he would crack down on tax avoidance. But he continues to avoid taxing the real culprits of the recession and increase in public debt.

Mr Osborne, himself apparently supported by a £4m offshore trust, a form of legal tax avoidance, has apparently allowed Vodafone to write off outstanding tax bill of £6bn. According to Johann Hari in the Independent (http://www.independent.co.uk/opinion/commentators/johann-hari/johann-hari-a-colder-crueller-country-ndash-for-no-gain-2112069.html) bankers have just awarded themselves £7bn in bonuses for their part in causing the recession.

Nor are Labour politicians free from blame. As Mark Thomas pointed out last year (see him on You Tube) Government buildings sold off under PFI are paying rent to offshore companies paying no tax. These include the Treasury building where George Osborne hatched his plans. It also includes Home Office buildings, hospitals and even the Albert Bridge House tax office. So the HMRC tax collectors, who are paid bonuses for the tax demands they send out (whether or not they are correct), are paying rent to tax avoiders.

This Con Dem budget will push the country back into recession. The job losses will continue into the private sector as sub-contractors and temporary staff are the first to be laid off by local government and the NHS. The overall loss of tax and additional unemployment benefit will cost more than the savings made and I predict that the public deficit will go up, not down, in the next 4 years. Surely it would be so much better to tax the tax avoiders and use the money to invest in new Green jobs, as the Green Party suggested at the general election?

Budget Cuts or Green Investment?

When is a budget not a budget? The answer is when it does not address the elephant in the room. Whilst Chancellor Darling has tinkered with a few figures, he has failed to address the cause of the recession, the banks.

As Caroline Lucas, Green Party Leader commented:
"This budget is a missed opportunity to put fairness and sustainability at the centre of Britain's recovery plans. After 13 years of a Labour government, this country is more unequal today than it was when Labour came to power. Bold measures are needed, like the higher rate of 50% on incomes above £100 000 per year, abolishing the upper limit on NI contributions, and reinstating the 10p tax band. While we welcome the introduction of a green investment bank, it lacks sufficient resources to create the huge number of jobs that should be at the heart of this approach."

As a former city worker myself, I believe that having nationalised the commercial banks, the Government then stupidly allowed the bankers to pay themselves massive bonuses generated by the Government’s short-sighted policy of “quantitative easing” (printing money to you and me). In casino banking terms making money off QE was a dead cert.

As Green Guru and Green Party Candidate for Cambridge, Tony Juniper wrote in the Independent: "The Chancellor could have acted unilaterally to introduce a Tobin-style tax on international currency transactions, instead of hiding behind the countries which don't want to do it. Reckless bankers have taken so much out of our economy, and it is the poorer people who will feel the most pain in putting it right."

The only real solution Darling proposed for cutting costs was to reduce inefficiencies like cutting the level of sickness in nurses. Who was to provide this miracle cure was not specified, but I'm sure a lot of over-worked nurses would be grateful to know what it is!.
There is scope for savings in the Health Service. Bureaucratic management has doubled since Labour came to power, whereas their productivity has decreased.Taking management and accounting in the NHS back to basics will save thousands of administration jobs, who then could be redeployed to do something more useful.

There is also a very simple way to cut Local Government costs. Look on any Local Authority web site and try and work out what the Chief Executive does. Launching initiatives and giving awards seems to be the sum total of their labours. Yet Local Government Chief Executives have doubled their pay since Labour came to power. So, Alistair Darling, a quick win would be to sack every Local Authority Chief Executive in the country, thereby saving half a billion pounds and hand power back to elected councillors.