Conservative councils deliver failure

The Tory party social media presence is absolutely repulsive. It's not jest the fact that they spread so many misrepresentations, smears, and outright lies, it's the disgusting way that they do it, and the sick elitist mentality of the Tory strategists who believe they can lie like this with total impunity because the general public are too thick and gullible to see through their deceptions, even when they've resorted to reality-reversing Orwellian propaganda tactics.

In this article I'm going to critique one Tweet from the @Conservatives Twitter account, but the problem is obviously wider than just a single Tweet. The @Conservatives account continually pushes misleading and downright dishonest political propaganda alongside multiple other misinformation accounts such as the vile @CCHQ account, and dozens of others.

Local elections are about local issues

The most convincing lies always have a kernel of truth about them, and in this case it's the perfectly valid assertion that "local elections on May 3 will decide how your local services are run and how much you pay for them. Things like street cleaning, rubbish collection, road repairs and helping the elderly".

This is actually true. So as the local election campaign heats up and the Tories and the right-wing media focus ever more effort on smearing Jeremy Corbyn in the hope of frightening people away from voting Labour at the local level, just remember that the Tories have admitted the truth here, and that local elections are actually about local government and local services, not about Jeremy Corbyn's personality and national level policies.

Austerity dogma

Noting that local elections are principally about local issues does not mean that central government policy has no influence on local government and local services, in fact central government polcy can have a devastating impact on your local community.

Since 2010 the Tories have slashed the Department of Communities and Local Government by an astounding 67% meaning disastrous consequences for local services up and down the country.

The Tory obsession with ruinous hard-right austerity fanaticism is the principal reason that your Council Tax bill is going up again despite your local government services being in a worse state than they've ever been.

Just think about the things the Tories listed in the tweet.

• Street cleaning and other maintenance services like grass cutting have been slashed.

• Bin collections have been scaled back from weekly to fortnightly, or even 3-weekly collections across the country.

• Surely everyone who drives has noticed the deterioration in the state of the roads over the last eight years?

• And surely everyone is aware that social care services for the frail and elderly have been massively reduced which not only leaves vulnerable people with inadequate care, it also increases pressure on already over-stretched NHS facilities when the victims of these cuts are left with nowhere else to turn but their local hospital. 

All of this is a direct consequence of the Tory fixation with hard-right austerity dogma, and the reason your Council Tax bill is going up again despite this collapse in the standard of your local services is that your local council desperately needs more cash to plug the worst and most dangerous of the shortfalls.

Delivery

The text of the Tweet claims that "Conservative councillors deliver better services in your area & lower taxes for you". The first part of the claim is dubious and the second part is an outright lie.

Better services?

Even if we skip over the fact that Tory austerity dogma is the cause of collapsing local services up and down the country, the first claim that Tory councils "deliver better services in your area" is dubious because even at the local level Tories believe in the same hard-right austerity ideology.

This fixation with austerity dogma that exists at every level of the Tory party means that they cut local services with an ideological zeal, believing that they're actually doing something wonderful by shutting down children's services, gutting social care, trashing local services, closing public facilities and flogging off publicly owned assets to their wealthy property speculator mates.

Councils that are controlled by other parties are also suffering the ruinous consequences of the Tory austerity cuts, but at least they're generally being run by people who actually believe in stuff like public services and looking after the vulnerable. This means that at least they're more inclined to prioritise and protect public services to the best of their abilities, rather than gleefully slashing away out of adherence to the crazed hard-right austerity doctrine.

Lower taxes?

Last year the Tory government's own figures admitted that the average Council Tax bill in Labour council areas is £336 cheaper than the average in Tory council areas.

The claim that the Tories deliver "lower taxes" is an outright lie.

Conservative councils deliver failure

If anyone wants to see an example of what Tory councils actually deliver, just take a look into the state of Tory run Northamptonshire Council which announced that they're essentially insolvent just a couple of months ago.

If you want your local government to be run so badly its at risk of collapsing into insolvency like Northamptonshire then vote Tory, because Conservative councils deliver failure.

Worse services Higher Taxes

Whether you vote Tory at the national level, or at the local level you're actually voting for worse services and higher taxes.

People voting Tory at the national level caused the 67% cut to the local government budget, which has resulted in wrecked local services and rising Council tax bills.

People voting Tory at the local lever results in people with the same hard-right austerity mentality gleefully gutting local services out of some deranged belief that systematically destroying local government services is a means of improving the nation!

Tory arrogance

Perhaps the most shocking thing of all about this Tweet is the sheer arrogance of the people who devised it. 

They know as well as anyone that their own austerity fanaticism is the primary reason that people are paying higher Council Tax bills despite their local services being worse than ever. But they're so full of contempt for the "lower orders" that they see us as gullible enough to simply believe them when they feed us this kind of Orwellian "black is white" propaganda.

All a person actually needs do to see through this brazen Tory propaganda is to look at their Council Tax bill and then observe the dreadful state of local services and public infrastructure in their local communities. But the people who devised these "Better Services Lower Taxes" and "Conservative councils deliver" slogans clearly assume people like us to be so thick, and so gullible, that we're incapable of doing even that.

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Want to know why your Council tax is going up again?

If you want to know why your Council Tax bill is going up, but the services your local council provide are worse than they've ever been before, I've got the answer for you.

The reason that councils across the country are increasing Council Tax bills whilst simultaneously cutting what they actually spend on services is that the Tory government have slashed central government funding for local governments by 67% since 2010, and they're still slashing away at the Communities and Local Government budget now.

This sustained Tory attack on local government funding means that councils have way less money to spend on maintaining local infrastructure and services.

• Local councils have far less to spend on waste services, so these ideologically driven Tory cuts are the reason that a huge number of councils have reduced bin collections to fortnightly.

• Local councils have far less to spend on local amenities like libraries, public toilets, leisure centres, and public spaces like parks and indoor markets, so these ideologically driven Tory cuts are the reason that they're being closed down and sold off to property developers.

• Local councils have far less to spend on running their planning departments, so these ideologically driven Tory cuts are the reason that simple planning applications are taking longer than ever to process.

• Local councils have far less to spend on highway maintenance, so these ideologically driven Tory cuts are the reason that our roads are deteriorating so badly.

• Local councils have far less to spend on youth services, so these ideologically driven Tory cuts are the reason that councils up and down the country have cut back on youth clubs andother programmes to keep young people occupied and out of trouble.

• Local councils have far less to spend on social care services for the frail and elderly, so these ideologically driven Tory cuts are the reason that millions of elderly and infirm people are being left with totally inadequate care, meaning they end up in hospitals, which puts a lot more strain on the NHS (which the Tories are also deliberately under-funding).

The infuriating thing is that despite the devastating impact of these ideologically driven Tory cuts going on all around us, our local councils have no choice but to raise Council Tax rates in a desperate attempt to plug a few of the most serious of the gaps.

So where has all the money gone that the Tories have saved by slashing the Communities and Local Government budget to pieces?

While they've been gutting local government budget the Tory government have simultaneously been distributing lavish tax cuts and handouts to corporations and the mega-rich.

They've slashed the top rate of income tax to give an average £100,000 annual tax break to Britain's 13,000 income millionaires, and since 2010 they've cut the corporation tax rate from 28% to just 19% today, (which is by far the lowest in the G7).

Then there's all the handouts the Tories have given to corporations and the rich through ridiculously one-sided outsourcing contracts that cost more to run than they'll ever actually save, rip-off privatisation scams to flog off public property at way below its true market value, and the wholesale give-away of public property to wealthy Tory donors.

So the next time you ask yourself why you're paying way more Council Tax when your local services are worse than they've ever been before ... some smug corporate fat cat somewhere has purchased a brand new luxury yacht to berth in Monaco, or blasted six figures on a classic Aston Martin to add to his already extensive car collection.

Thanks to the Tory ideological obsession with the upwards redistribution of wealth, that's what you're paying for.

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Theresa May has complacently betrayed the Tory core vote

The Tory Dementia Tax is surely one of the nastiest and most ill-conceived pieces of legislation to ever appear in a General Election manifesto.

It just goes to show how arrogant and out of touch the Tory party are that they thought they could get away with announcing such a malicious scheme to asset strip elderly people for the "crime" of developing dementia or serious physical disabilities in their old age after lifetimes of paying National Insurance and Council Tax to cover the cost of things like the NHS and social care.

Setting the bar at £100,000 when the average property price in the UK is £215,000 is clearly a way of harvesting the wealth of middle income families.

The poor won't have to pay it because they won't own their own homes. The very wealthy won't have to pay it because they can pay for private care in their old age. So it's just the middle who get asset stripped. The people who worked hard and saved to buy their own properties are the low-hanging fruit the Tories have identified. They're the target this time.

Dementia Tax is clearly an inheritance tax specifically to extract the wealth of middle income families as they get ill in their old age, so that the Tories can continue lavishing tax breaks on the super-rich and their corporate chums (like the £70 billion that the ongoing Tory corporation tax cuts are going to cost by 2020).

Dementia Tax is a clear and demonstrable attack on the Tory party's own core support.

Theresa May has been so busy trying to turn the Conservatives into a UKIP-on-steroids party in order to attract the UKIP vote and the extreme-right demographic that she's totally neglected the Tory core support, and utterly betrayed them with this callous asset stripping scheme.

Now that Theresa May has expressed her intention to asset strip any home owner who has the misfortune to get ill in their old age, where do these people turn?

Well Anna from Putney has made up her mind. She told LBC that Dementia Tax is pure evil, and declared "I shall go and vote for Jeremy Corbyn then"!

Theresa May's been so busy turning the Tories into UKIP-on-steroids she's casually betrayed and enraged the Tory core vote! #DementiaTax pic.twitter.com/h0Isc9mAJV

— Another Angry Voice (@Angry_Voice) May 18, 2017

I guess Theresa May and the Tories had become so complacent about their support amongst the older generations that they decided that they could do pretty much whatever they liked to them with total impunity:

• Scrap the triple lock on pensions

• Scrap the winter fuel payments

• Scrap the guarantee not to raise VAT (consumption taxes hit income poor pensioners particularly hard) 

• Even announce their Dementia Tax with great fanfare as if letting pensioners continue to live in their house as the asset value is stripped away is some kind of great act of Tory kindness!

The mainstream media demonisation campaign has been particularly effective in making the older generations hate Jeremy Corbyn, but the Labour Manifesto pledges to keep the triple lock, keep the universal benefits for pensioners, to not raise VAT and to properly fund social care, rather than asset stripping elderly people to make them pay it themselves.

Any older person with any sense at all should be thinking about voting to remove the Tories from power, not sending the Theresa May a clear message that she can do whatever she wants to the older generations from now on and assume that the Tories will always win "the grey vote".

What we can do

Make sure that you are registered to vote so you can vote against the Tories and encourage others to register too.

Spread awareness: Talk to the older generations and let them know about the Tory plans to introduce Dementia Tax and to scrap the Triple lock. Show them the clip and let them know that other people are switching away from the Tories,

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Jeremy Corbyn just destroyed Theresa May over the leaked Surrey texts

Jeremy Corbyn just clobbered Theresa May at Prime Minister's Questions by revealing leaked messages between the leader of Surrey Council David Hodge and somebody called Nick, which referred to a secret Memorandum of Understanding in order for the Tory council to drop their referendum on a 15% Council Tax increase in order to fund their devastated social care budget.

Theresa May was clearly rattled by the ambush, but she held herself together to present a sequence of snide pre-written non-answers to Corbyn's questions, which, as everyone knows by now, is her only fallback given her abject inability to think on her feet.

More telling than Theresa May's floundering response to the shock revelation of the leaked messages was the reaction of the Tory local government minister Sajid Javid who looked well and truly guilty.

Theresa May's sequence of blatantly evasive non-answers to Jeremy Corbyn's questions are an absolute disgrace. Astoundingly the Speaker John Bercow actually intervened in the debate to chastise MPs for shouting and then say that "the questions will be heard and the answers will be heard", which is odd, because everyone could hear Jeremy Corbyn's questions (over the usual barrage of Tory braying and shouting), but all we heard from Theresa May were absolute non-answers.

In the kind of dream reality where the Speaker of the House of Commons is actually capable of competently chairing a debate, perhaps he might consider intervening to ensure that Theresa May's responses actually bear any relation to the question whatever?

One of Theresa May's most ludicrous reactions to Corbyn's ambush was to accuse Labour of dealing in "Alternative Facts", which is an audaciously cynical move. We all know that the term "alternative facts" was invented by a member of the Trump administration as an whitewash euphemism for "government lies", and we also all remember the way that Theresa May scuttled off to America at the first opportunity in order to deliver her "begging bowl" speech full of Trump eulogies and special pleading for the Tory-Trump trade deal that underpins her ludicrously inept Brexit strategy.

Theresa May had no answers whatever to explain what Surrey Council had been offered in order to get them to drop their council tax referendum. It's absolutely clear from the messages that some kind of offer was made, and that Sajid Javid's department and the Treasury Chief Secretary David Gauke were involved.

In the wake of the revelation David Hodge admitted that the messages were meant to be sent to Sajid Javid's special adviser Nick King, but that they were accidentally sent to a Labour councillor called Nick Forbes instead. It doesn't matter how the Tories try to spin this one, the messages were sent, and there was some kind of secret deal going on between Theresa May's government and Tory controlled Surrey Council.

It's vital that the Tories are made to reveal what kind of offer was made to Surrey Council, and whether such an offer is now going to be made to all of the other councils in the UK that are desperately struggling to provide social care as a result of the Tories' £4.6 billion in cuts to the social care budget since 2010.

Is this yet another case of the Tory government offering special favours to Tory councils, and screw everyone else? Or are they going to offer the secret deal that Surrey got to everyone else?

 Another Angry Voice  is a "Pay As You Feel" website. You can have access to all of my work for free, or you can choose to make a small donation to help me keep writing. The choice is entirely yours.

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Regressive Taxation explained

Regressive Taxation is a term that refers to any kind of taxation that affects the poor more than the rich. Taxation schemes are described as regressive if the apply a larger burden (in terms of available resources) on the poor, than the rich.

Put simply, a regressive tax is one that takes a larger chunk out of a poor persons income, than it does out of a rich one's.

Regressive Taxes are extremely common in the UK, I'll run through a number of examples before looking at another factor that increases the regressivity of the UK tax system; taxation asymmetry.

VAT

VAT is usually the most commonly cited example of regressive taxation. Research has consistently proved that the poor pay a higher share of their income in VAT than the rich. This is due to the Marginal Propensity to Consume (poor people spend a higher proportion of their income, rich people save a higher proportion).

A study by the Office for National Statistics in 2008/09 found that the poorest 20% of the population spend 8.7% of their income on VAT, whilst the wealthiest 20% spend only 4.0% of their income on VAT. The evidence is absolutely clear that VAT is a regressive tax, however that doesn't stop right-wing VAT apologists lying about it. They often claim that VAT is not regressive because rich people spend more than poor people, therefore they pay more VAT, but this is a deliberately misleading argument. It doesn't matter that a wealthy individual actually pays more VAT in cash terms (because they buy expensive clothes and luxury items for example) because the VAT burden in relation to their overall income is still much lower than the relative VAT burden on a poor individual.

One of the key indicators that VAT is a regressive taxation is that it is highly favoured by the Conservative party. They have increased VAT on several occasions, including 1979, 1991 and most recently 2010, just a few weeks after categorically stating that they had no plans to raise VAT during the 2010 General Election campaign.

Fuel Tax
In western economies fuel tax is another regressive taxation because the working poor generally spend a higher percentage of their income on fuel than the rich. The individual that earns £1,000,000 a year is extremely unlikely to spend 50 times as much on fuel as the individual that earns £20,000 a year. Even if this hypothetical wealthy individual owns a fleet of luxury sports cars with large high fuel consumption engines, it is hard to imagine how they could spend so much time on this hobby that they spend 50 times as much on fuel as the £20,000 earner that commutes to work on a regular basis.

The reason I quantified the opening paragraph with "in western economies" is that in many poorer economies, where vehicle ownership is very rare amongst the poorest 20% (most African countries, parts of Latin America, large swathes of Asia), the regressive effect doesn't exist for them, since the poor majority rarely purchase gasoline or diesel. The regressivity still exists, but only between the wealthy minority and the remainder of the relatively small vehicle owning class.

National Insurance
National Insurance is another example of a regressive taxation. The reason that National Insurance is regressive is that earnings above the National Insurance Upper Earnings Limit (UEL) of £41,150 per year (as of 2013) are subject to just 2% NI contributions on salaries and benefits in kind, whilst people earning between the Primary Threshold of £7,755 and the UEL of £41,150 must pay 5.85% on salaries and 12% on benefits in kind.

This massive disparity between the proportion of income paid in NI contributions by the majority of workers, and the significantly smaller amount paid by extremely high earners makes National Insurance another example of regressive taxation.

Here are some examples:

Percentage of basic salary paid in National Insurance:
£20,000 per year      = 3.58%
£50,000 per year      = 4.25%
£100,000 per year    = 3.12%
£1,000,000 per year = 2.11%
£2,000,000 per year = 2.06%

As you can see from the examples, the upper middle class actually pay marginally more as a percentage of their income in National Insurance than the working poor, however, the higher the earnings above the £41,150 upper threshold, the smaller the relative burden of National Insurance becomes.

Council Tax
Council Tax is yet another example of a regressive taxation because of the absurd and arbitrary way that Council Tax Bands have been calculated.

The way the bands work in England is that a Band H property (valued at £320,001 or more in 1991) pays three times the council tax of a Band A property (worth £40,000 or less in 1991). Because the nominal value of the property is at least 8 times as high between Band H and Band A, a tax differential of 3:1 is actually very small.

Since the upper limit is a value of £320,001, this means that a multi-million pound mansion might pay the same, or only very marginally more than a large family home. When considered as a proportion of the property value a typical Band H charge of £2,536 on a mansion valued at £2.6 million represents a minuscule  0.1% of the property valuation, whilst a house valued at £162,500 paying a typical Band G charge of £2,113 is shelling out 1.3% of the property valuation. An individual inhabiting a house that was only valued at £10,000 in 1991 facing a typical Band A charge of £845 is left shelling out 8.45% of the valuation of their property.

To put these figures into perspective, it would take the country mansion dwelling family around 1,000 years of Band H Council Tax contributions to pay out the nominal property valuation of their dwelling. It would take the upper middle class professional with a large house in the leafy suburbs around 77 years of Band G contributions to pay off their nominal property value. And the poor occupier of the inner city slum dwelling would shell out the nominal valuation of their property in less than 12 years of Band A contributions.

Another factor to consider is that holiday homes and second homes are given a 50% council tax reduction, which means that someone with two Band H properties each nominally valued at over £1 million, would end up paying less in Council Tax for each of their two properties, than the owner of a Band G property with a nominal value of just over £160,000 pays for their single property.

Under the current Council Tax setup, it turns out that the more valuable the property, the lower the proportion of its value that must be paid in Council Tax, and the more properties an individual owns, the lower the burden of Council Tax becomes in relation to the value of the property portfolio.

Sin Taxes
Sin Taxes, which are sometimes called Pigovian Taxes (after Arthur Pigou, the English economist that developed the concept of economic externalities) are taxes which are applied on products like alcohol, cigarettes and coffee. Sin Taxes are amongst the most regressive forms of taxation because taxation on these "sinful products" does not account for ability to pay, meaning that the less well off pay a higher proportion of their income through these taxes.

According to research by The Tax Foundation in the US, the least wealthy 20% spend a 78% larger share of their income on alcohol taxes than people in the top 20%, and a staggering 583% larger share of their income on tobacco taxes.

In my view taxation on products with negative externalities (health costs, public disorder, domestic violence, pollution ...) should be taxed in order to cover the socio-economic costs, however, the way these taxes are currently applied results in the less well off bearing the greater proportional burden for their "sinful habits".

Bedroom Tax
[main article]
Before the pedants point out that "Bedroom Tax" isn't actually a tax in the strict sense of the word, it is still a government policy aimed at transferring the burden of austerity onto many of the poorest families and individuals in society. It is now absolutely clear that there is nowhere near enough smaller social housing available for everyone being hit by "Bedroom Tax" to relocate to, meaning that the vast majority are left with no choice but to cut their living standards in order to scrape together the money to pay "Bedroom Tax".

Taxation asymmetry
Aside from all of the regressive forms of taxation, there is another factor that plays a major role in widening the regressivity of the UK tax system. This factor is is lax tax enforcement, which causes taxation asymmetry.

To put it simply, it is much easier for the wealthy to reduce their tax burden through tax-dodging activities than it is for the ordinary person. The more permissive the tax system becomes in regards to tax-dodging, the lower the burden of taxation becomes on those wealthy enough to employ expensive tax lawyers to help them reduce their tax burden.

Taxation asymmetry means that wealthy bankers, celebrities and even Labour politicians can massively reduce their burden of taxation by using tax-loopholes or personal service companies, in order to avoid paying income tax and national insurance contributions on large chunks of their income. Some famous examples of wealthy people avoiding tax on their income include the Tory party donor George Robinson, the Topshop boss and Tory party "efficiency adviser Philip Green the so-called comedian Jimmy Carr and the former mayor of London Ken Livingstone.


The lax tax collection system in the UK allows many thousands of wealthy individuals to dodge paying their fair share of income tax, which is one of the very few UK taxes that isn't regressively applied. If the wealthy minority can just set up tax dodging schemes to avoid paying income tax on their fortunes, the progressive nature of the tax is invalidated, and a very unfair situation is created between the wealthy that do pay the expected amount of income tax on their earnings, and those that use tax-dodging schemes to avoid paying their share.

Taxation asymmetry is even more apparent in the business environment. The asymmetry between the tax burden on a Starbucks coffee shop franchise and a local independent shop without the means to divert profits offshore via convoluted transfer pricing schemes creates the situation where a Starbucks franchise pays virtually no corporation tax, whilst the local independent coffee shop is hit with the full tax load, means that the tax-dodging corporation has a massive unfair advantage.
  
Conclusion

The tax system in the UK is highly regressive and the policies of the Tory - Lib Dem coalition are making this situation worse. The Liberals hide their complicity in this behind the fig leaf of the rises in the lower threshold of income tax, but the small gains ordinary people have made from this have more than been wiped out by increases in other regressive forms of taxation and through the unprecidented scale of wage repression. For everything the Liberals have given with one hand, the Tories have taken away manyfold with the other.

It is hardly surprising that the dual strategy of making the taxation system even more regressive than it already was and the unprecidented scale of wage repression in the UK economy have coincided with the weakest period of economic recovery since records began. The creation of a consumerist economy majority populated by an over-taxed, under-paid and debt laden proletariat would be an utterly absurd venture from an economic perspective. However, given their policies of regressive taxation, wage repression and debt inflation it seems to be exactly what the Tory led government are working to achieve.

 

Read more articles in the "What is...." series

MORE ARTICLES FROM
 ANOTHER ANGRY VOICE 
         
What is... Neoliberalism?
           
What is ... Capital Flight?
                        
What is... Fiscal Multiplication?
                     
The economic case against tax-dodging
                      
Who is to blame for the economic crisis?
                          
George Osborne's economic extremism
                

You've been Wongad
                 

What is... Confirmation bias?

          
What is ... Wage Repression?
                 
The Great Neoliberal Lie
  

Three ways in which the "Bedroom tax" exposes Tory hypocrisy

In April 2013 the Tory led Coalition government will introduce a measure called "Bedroom tax", which is an absurd scheme aimed at financially penalising poor people into moving out of their homes. Social housing tenants in receipt of housing benefit will have their housing support payments reduced if they are deemed to be "under occupying" their homes. The measures are supposedly designed to save £480 million, a seemingly large sum until one considers that annual housing benefits payouts amount to £23 billion (48x the amount) and that much like all government estimates, the figure is almost certain to be a grotesquely over-optimistic calculation.

Problems with the "Bedroom tax"

The main thrust of the article will be to explain how "Bedroom tax" demonstrates Tory hypocrisy, however first I'd like to run through some of the reasons that "Bedroom tax" will prove cruel and ineffective for many reasons. This is a long, but by no means exhaustive list of reasons that the "Bedroom tax" is a terrible and malicious idea:

• A sensible strategy to increase the availability of social housing is to build more social housing. Not only would this increase the supply of decent , affordable family sized housing, it would also stimulate economic demand, since the construction of social housing is a proven high fiscal multiplier. This kind of homebuilding strategy would never happen under a Conservative government, given their burning ideological hatred of the whole concept of social housing. Instead we get bonkers schemes like "Bedroom tax".

• In many areas (especially the North of England and Scotland) there is a chronic shortage of one and two bedroom social housing. Take Hull for example:4,700 tenants are going to be affected by the "Bedroom tax" charge, but there are only 73 one or two bedroom properties available in the area. It is impossible for the vast majority of those families to find smaller accommodation, so they face no choice but to pay the "Bedroom tax". If there is nowhere available to downsize to, it becomes absolutely obvious that this scheme is simply a method of impoverishing some of society's poorest members.

• It has been estimated that the vast majority of people who are going to be effected by this tax will be families with disabled members, many of whom have had their homes specially adapted to their needs (wide doors and ramps for wheelchair access, stairlifts, adapted bathrooms and kitchens...). Forcing them out of their home because they are deemed to have a "spare bedroom" means that large amounts of money will have to be spent on making adaptations to their new smaller homes, assuming that there are even any available in their area.

• In some cases people are being penalised by "bedroom tax" even though they live in elderly supported accommodation. The only reason to evict someone from such places for the "crime" of having a spare box room would seem to be to allow wealthier social housing tenants (that can afford to pay some £500+ extra a year for a spare bedroom) to take their place, since elderly supported accommodation is not meant for families anyway.

• Another group of people effected by "Bedroom tax" will be those families with members serving in the armed forces, if they are away on duty for more than 13 weeks, their family members back home will be stung with a tax bill on account of their absence.

• Yet another group to be penalised are separated couples that have joint custody of their children. Those partners that look after the kids on the weekend or during school holidays will be stung with "Bedroom tax" penalties for supposedly under-occupying their homes. Lord Freud, one of the minsters responsible for the "Bedroom tax" scheme famously told one Scottish father that he should make his three sons share a fold-out sofa bed when they come to stay (Freud has two houses with a total of 12 bedrooms, an under-occupation rate of 91.7%).

• Only penalising those that are in social housing means that housing benefits recipients "under occupying" private rented accommodation will not be penalised. Given that the private rented sector is now larger than the social housing sector, this exclusion means that increases in the supply of family sized homes and reductions in the housing benefit bill will be severely limited.

• Owners of empty properties will remain completely unaffected. Tackling the estimated million unoccupied homes with an empty home tax would seem like a much more sensible strategy to tackle the "housing shortage" than financially penalising poor people for the "crime" of having a "spare bedroom" in the home that they occupy.

• Wealthy owners of council houses will also remain entirely unaffected, since they receive no housing benefits. A scheme that tackles "under occupation" by focusing exclusively on the most needy social housing tenants (the ones in receipt of benefits), looks a lot more like undisguised Tory malice than a scheme that is designed to achieve any specific outcome.

• Pensioners in social housing are also excluded (because the Tories certainly don't want to be seen to be attacking one of their core demographics), meaning that many really old people will be allowed to keep the 3/4/5 bedroom social houses that they don't need, whist families with disabled children will be financially penalised for the "crime" of having specially adapted bedrooms.

Tory hypocrisy

Okay, now were past some of the many arguments against this harebrained scheme, lets move on to the ways in which it clearly demonstrates Tory party hypocrisy.

Small state libertarianism
The Conservative party, and right-wingers in general, always love to dress themselves up as freedom fighting libertarians. They pretend that their desire to shrink the state is driven by an ideological objection to "state interference" both in an economic sense and in a public sense too. They pretend that they believe that the state mustn't interfere in the economy in order to allow the "invisible hand of the free market" to guide the economy to prosperity and they also pretend that they believe the state mustn't interfere in the personal lives of its citizens. "Bedroom tax" can be seen as an affront to both of these claimed principles, but especially the second one.
The rules of the bedroom tax are very specific about who should be sleeping in which bedrooms. The state dictates that the children of poor social housing tenants must sleep two to a bedroom. The only exception being children of different sexes that are over the age of ten. Thus, the state is dictating to people that their 15 year old son (who perhaps likes to masturbate a lot and suffers from BO, which would hardly be atypical), must share a bedroom with their three year old brother. There are also insisting that severely disabled children share their bedroom with siblings too (here's one example of a severely disabled and often violent 15 year old being expected to share a room with her 3 year old sister).

These aren't just examples of the state gratuitously interfering in the lives of civilians, they are interferences that in many cases have severely detrimental consequences. It is absolutely clear that the "bedroom tax" has been dreamt up by someone without the faintest regard for libertarian or minarchist principles. It looks a hell of a lot more like a vindictive campaign dreamt up by a party with an ideological loathing of social housing tenants, aimed at penalising the poorest and most needy members of society than a policy from a party that like to claim that government shouldn't interfere in our everyday lives.

Next time you hear a Tory talking up the small-state, free-market credentials of their party, just remember the

"All in it together"
"We're all in it together" was one of the coalition government's favourite soundbytes during the first year-or-so of their rule. Well the tax and benefits changes due in April this year drive a few hundred more ring annular nails through the coffin lid of that particular narrative.

Whilst millionaires are handed a whopping great annual tax cut of £50,000+, corporations are coddled with yet another tax cut and tax-dodging British companies are given their wet-dream of a tax break to help them rip off third world economies, millions of ordinary people will face huge tax hikes, through "Bedroom tax" and "Poll Tax 2.0". Not only that, the government's own research admits that 1.7 million working families will lose thousands of pounds a year because of  the introduction of Universal Credit.

The changes in April will hammer home the case that "all in it together" is a contemptible lie and that the Tories are absolutely intent on forcing the burden of austerity onto those that can afford it the least, whilst enriching, and protecting the interests of the already wealthy.

Mansion tax

Do you remember the Tory justification narrative for opposing the Lib-Dem idea of a "Mansion tax" on properties valued at over £2 million? They loved to rely on the story of a hypothetical "little old lady" in her mansion, without the means to pay the "Mansion tax". Oh how unfair it would be, they wailed, to make our hypothetical old lady downsize her home to avoid the tax or to sell off a few acres of her estate to make more than enough money to cover the "Mansion tax" payments for the rest of her life.

Yet, they are intent on forcing tens of thousands of very real people out of their homes with their "Bedroom tax" charges. Those that cannot move due to the abject lack of 1 or 2 bedroom social housing in their area, will just have to pay up, whether they can afford it or not.

This just shows the mentality of the Tories.They vehemently defend the interests of hypothetical "little old ladies" in multi-million pound mansions, whilst imposing policies that are actually designed to drive very real vulnerable people out of their homes. On the Tory scale of priorities, the interests of real poor and vulnerable people with no means to pay come miles behind the interests of hypothetical rich people, with the hypothetical means to pay a bit extra.

 Conclusion

 
I reckon that in the first section I've demonstrated that the "Bedroom tax" is an absolutely rotten idea, in fact, it's so poorly conceived that even the uber-right-wing Daily Telegraph have referred to it as "mean oppressive and a politically daft gift to the left".

In the second section I've shown how the Tory embrace and trenchant defence of the "Bedroom tax" agenda shows them up as the hypocrites they are.

Next time you hear a Tory whining about Labour or the EU insidiously trying to micro-manage our daily lives, remember that the Tories are intent on financially penalising families that believe it is in their best interests that teenage child do not share a bedroom with their three year old siblings, the father that has a spare bedroom for the days when he has custody of his own kids or the couple that need a spare bedroom because one of them is so severely disabled that they need to sleep in a special hospital bed in a room full of medical equipment.

Next time you hear a Tory as much as imply that "we're all in it together", remember that at the same time as they are launching this plan to financially penalise poor and vulnerable people out of their homes, whether alternative accommodation is available or not, they are handing a whopping great £50,000+ annual tax cut to their millionaire mates.

Next time you hear a Tory decry the idea of a "Mansion tax" or the introduction of higher council tax bands for the owners of huge properties because the hypothetical "little old lady" might suffer, remember that they have no such qualms about deliberately driving hundreds of thousands of very real poor and disabled people out of their homes or stuffing them with hundreds of pounds a year in charges for the "crime" of under-occupying their homes.

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