The News In Shorts

How the news would look if everyone stopped waffling and told the truth.

Thursday 21 March 2013

The Great Confidence Trick Continues.

The face above is the face of the neoliberal capitalist system that has shattered the world economy and revealed itself as little better than a criminal conspiracy. Yesterday George Osborne delivered his fourth budget in defence of this unjust and unworkable system. Apart from 1p off beer and the new £10,000 tax threshold, which will benefit the rich just as much as the poor, there was little in it for ordinary people. While the poor are being taxed for having too many bedrooms, the rich are being given the opportunity to buy second homes with interest free government loans. This will "revitalise" the housing market Osborne tells us, but it is a measure designed only to support the sagging value of his own property portfolio. That nothing has changed and cannot change as long as the Tories warm their oversized backsides on the government benches is demonstrated by two facts that Osborne might not wish to discuss but are true nonetheless. The first fact is that Barclays Bank, at a time when they are being fined £290 million for the criminal manipulation of the Libor and Euribor rates, have given £39 million in bonuses to just nine executives. The criminals are rewarding themselves for getting away with it even as their customers have to pay the fines for their crimes. The second fact is that the government's drive against tax avoidance has raised the staggeringly small sum of just £20 million pounds per year. How could cracking down on tax avoidance produce such meagre returns? To begin with the real tax avoiders, the multi-nationals, have been almost totally ignored while HMRC concentrated on plumbers, tutors and ice cream vendors. This is what Osborne has been concentrating his efforts on behind the scenes - defending the banks and protecting the multi-nationals. While the rest of us are being squeezed for every penny Osborne and his rich mates are cashing in. The Tories think they have a right to govern but have no idea as to what their obligations to their country actually are. They are criminals in league with even bigger criminals and we, the people, are not their responsibility, we are their victims.

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