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.

 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.

OR

Jonathan Bartley savages the Tories over their "despicable" disability benefit cuts

The Green Party co-leader Jonathan Bartley told the Tories exactly what every decent and well-informed person in the country must be thinking about the Tories savage cuts to the welfare system.

On BBC Question Time Bartley focused on the cuts to Employment Support Allowance that is paid to people who have been deemed too unfit to work, describing the £30 per week cut as "despicable", and he's absolutely right.

The Tories have repeatedly tried to claim that this massive cut to disabled people's subsistence benefits will motivate them to look for work, but the parliamentary work and pensions select committee have said that the cuts are actually likely to push disabled people into poverty and actually make it harder for them to find work.

Liz Sayce, the chief executive of Disability Rights UK said that "We’re not aware of one single disability employment or benefits expert who thinks this particular cut will be an incentive for disabled people to get a job".

Mark Atkinson from the disability charity Scope, said: "We know that reducing disabled people’s incomes won’t incentivise them to find a job and won’t help halve the disability employment gap. It will just make life harder".

Rob Holland, of learning disability charity Mencap, said "the government has presented no robust evidence that cutting disabled people’s benefits will ‘incentivise’ them to find work. Instead the evidence suggests that this £30-a-week cut will push disabled people further from work, closer to or into poverty as well as affecting their health".

Despite universal opposition from disability and employment experts the Tories have ploughed on and imposed these brutal cuts regardless, endlessly repeating their totally unsubstantiated claims that slashing sick and disabled people's subsistence benefits will somehow help them find work.

These despicable disability benefit cuts aren't the only appalling cuts the Tories have made this week. In order to hand tax cuts to the already wealthy they've also snatched money from bereaved families, slashed the in-work benefits of the working poor, and introduced child welfare cuts that will condemn a further 250,000 British children to poverty.

All the Tory representative on Question Time Suella Fernandes could come back with was a load of utterly misleading guff about how the Tory government are "making work pay". This is absolutely not the case. Under this Tory government British workers are getting the worst deal in the developed world because the UK is the only developed nation where the economy is growing but workers are suffering real terms declines in their wages.

Even if Fernandes' risible "making work pay" claims were true, which they blatantly aren't, there's absolutely no way that anyone but the most gullible of Tory tribalists could accept that slashing the benefits of people who have been deemed too unwell to work and reducing the in-work benefits of the working poor could possibly be effective methods for ensuring that work pays.

Once again the Tories have been exposed as a callous bunch of liars who are engaged on an ideological mission to snatch money from the poorest people in society in order to redistribute it to the already wealthy.

Will this stop people from voting Tory?

It seems unlikely. There are just too many utterly selfish "I'm alright Jack" bastards in Britain with no empathy whatever for those they perceive to be beneath them on the social ladder. They'll vote Tory because they actually approve of snatching cash from people who are too sick to work, from bereaved families, from the working poor, and from children, because they want to pay a few quid less a year in income tax.

 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.

OR

Take from the poor to give to the rich

Imagine how gullible you would have to be to actually fall for Theresa May's crocodile tears about inequality and the "just about managing". On Thursday April 6th the Tory government are introducing a load of welfare cuts that affect the poorest people in society whilst handing out tax breaks that benefit the richest people in society.

If Theresa May actually gave the slightest damn about combating inequality and looking after the "just about managing" she had plenty of time to reverse George Osborne's last assault on the poor before it came into force, but she didn't.

The Resolution Foundation have found that 67% of the Tory welfare cuts will impoverish the poorest third of UK families, whilst 80% of the tax cuts are being handed to the well off. Once again it's a Tory budget that snatches from the poor in order to redistribute to the already well off.

One of the most appalling welfare changes is the decision to snatch bereavement benefits from families in which one of the parents has died. The savings from snatching this money are absolutely minuscule in comparison to Tory policies like renewing the UKs stockpile of WMDs, Brexit, and bribing the Chinese into building our energy infrastructure for us.

Analysis by the Guardian has found that the welfare cuts will end up pushing another 250,000 British kids into poverty. It's quite something that the Prime Minister can take time off from licking the boots of Saudi tyrants to furiously condemn a National Trust Easter egg hunt for not using the word "Easter" (when it clearly did), but the Christian morality she spends so much time going on about is perfectly fine with her snatching money off bereaved families and condemning a quarter of a million British kids to poverty!

Next time you see Theresa May crying crocodile tears about how much she cares about the vulnerable, or the disabled, or the working poor it's vital to remember that it's just an act (and not a very convincing one either).

Her strategists have told her that in the current political landscape words speak louder than actions. As long as she talks a lot of empty platitudes about wanting to reduce inequality, she can easily get away with actively increasing it.

The sad thing is that Theresa May's strategists appear to be right. It doesn't matter how blatantly her words are contradicted by her disgusting actions, millions of people actually adore her and refuse to even acknowledge her outrageous insincerity.

 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.

OR

If anyone is playing petty "class war" politics, it's the Tories

One of the most familiar battle cries of the Tories and their cheerleaders in the right-wing corporate press is the claim that anyone who opposes Tory policies is guilty of "class warfare". I've already written an article about how so many Tories seem to be stuck in the class warfare battles of the 1970s so I won't go into that in so much detail. In this article I'm going to present some facts and analysis to support the argument that if anyone is guilty of conducting "class warfare" then it's clearly the Tories.

Social security cuts

Research conducted by Sheffield Hallam University has conclusively shown that the worst impact of Tory so-called "welfare reform" has been imposed on predominantly Labour voting areas like the north east, north west, south Wales and parts of Greater London.

Meanwhile the majority of the least affected areas happen to be in the Tory strongholds of the Home Counties and the rural north.

Council cuts

When we look at the severity of cuts to local council budgets a very similar pattern emerges. Predominantly Labour voting areas have borne the heaviest cuts in local government spending, while Tory councils have generally got off much more lightly.

Even though Tory councils have suffered nothing like the severity of budget cuts endured by places like Newcastle, that didn't stop David Cameron's own mother and aunt from lambasting the devastating effects of his ideological austerity agenda on local services, and neither did it stop Cameron himself from writing a bizarrely hypocritical letter to the leader of Oxfordshire County Council to complain about the service cuts they have been forced to make as a result of the Tory central government's obsession with ideological austerity.
Even though the bulk of local government austerity has been inflicted on poorer Labour voting areas, the Tory response to the furore over local government cuts by Tory councils and Tory MPs was to announce an extra £300 million in local government funding, 83% of which will go to Tory controlled councils.

The working poor vs wealthy pension savers

When George Osborne was planning to rob the working poor by slashing their working Tax Credits (despite numerous pre-election promises that the Tories would do no such thing) he ploughed on with it for ages in the face of massive public opposition, harsh criticism from opposition MPs, criticism from his fellow Tory MPs, and a large House of Lords rebellion.

Eventually George Osborne "U-turned" (by finding other ways of robbing the working poor), but he put up an epic fight to impoverish them.

When it came to proposed pension reforms that would have adversely impacted the rich, George Osborne dropped them before they'd even been officially announced! 

The contrast couldn't be more obvious.

Bedroom Tax and tax cuts for the rich

One of the clearest examples of Tory "class war" politics came in April 2013 when they introduced "Bedroom Tax" to penalise social housing tenants from poor backgrounds whether there was a smaller property available for them to move (less than 3% of cases) into or not (over 97% of cases).

In the very same week that they economically sanctioned hundreds of thousands of some of the poorest families in the UK, they handed an average £100,000 per year tax cut to Britain's 13,000 income millionaires!

Then they've got the absolute cheek to keep telling us that "we-re all in this together"!

Workers' rights vs bankers' bonuses

The UK already has some of the most restrictive anti-trade union laws in the developed world, yet the Tories are pushing ahead with a plan to make trade union democracy so unworkable that taking strike action will become almost impossible. Proposed legislation to turn an abstention into a stronger vote against strike action than an actual vote against strike action can surely only have been devised as a deliberately malicious effort to render effective trade unionism almost impossible.

This ongoing Tory attack on trade unionism is not the only example of Tories attacking workers' rights. Take their introduction of £1,200 fees in order to seek compensation for unfair dismissal, prolonged public sector pay freezes (which conveniently don't seem to apply to members of parliament who get one inflation busting pay raise after another) and the longest sustained decline in workers' wages since records began.

On the other hand the Tories have done nothing to reform the banks after the 2007-08 financial sector insolvency crisis. In fact financial sector workers (including bankers at failed, taxpayer bailed out banks) are taking home even larger bonuses than they were before the crash, and the Tories are actively assisting the inflation of another hopelessly unsustainable property speculation bubble with house price inflation schemes like "Help to Buy".

There's a legitimate debate to be had about whether the unions had too much power in the 1970s, or whether industrial decline in the UK was more a consequence of the incompetence of the over-privileged and hopelessly uncompetitive upper managerial classes and their utter failure to adopt modern managerial practices in order to compete with the Japanese, Germans and Americans.

Where there is no room for debate whatever is whether the 2007-08 economic meltdown was caused by ordinary workers and trade union activity, or by a massive spree of shockingly reckless financial sector gambling and outright fraud.

The fact that the Tories choose to focus their legislative efforts on attacking the trade unions and undermining workers' rights instead of trying to get the bloated, corruption riddled financial sector under control is an absolutely clear demonstration that these people are ideologically driven class warriors with no real concern for the long-term well being of the UK economy.

Conclusion

Whichever way we turn, we see the Tories favouring rich over the poor, employers over employees, the aristocracy over the "lower orders", Tory councils over Labour ones, the privileged over the ordinary, the greedy over the needy, the 1% over the 99%.

The fact that they behave like this shouldn't be any kind of shock at all to anyone who knows where the Tories get most of their financial donations, but what is shocking is the way that Tories and their supporters continue to dismiss opposition to their divisive inequality promoting policies as "class war" politics when they themselves are clearly engaging in class war; a crusade to enrich the already wealthy minority at the expense of 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.

MORE ARTICLES FROM
 ANOTHER ANGRY VOICE 
         
Austerity is a con
           
The incompatibility of Christian ethics and modern Conservatism
                     
Why are so many Tories still fighting the ideological battles of the 1970s?
       
How gullible would you have to be to believe the Tory "hardworking people" propaganda?
                             
How the mainstream media frame the political debate
                
Why you should use your critical thinking skills 
(whatever the information source)
                      

The Tory ideological mission
                                
Margaret Thatcher's toxic neoliberal legacies
  

The Tory ideological mission

Nobody should be surprised that the Tory party serve the interests of the wealthy minority.

The fact that the Tory led government is packed full of millionaires who buy into the "greed is a virtue" philosophy of neoliberalism is one strong indicator that the serving of wealthy establishment interests should be expected. Another, even stronger indicator is the fact that the Tory party is funded by a rogues gallery of tax-dodgers, banksters, private health interests and landed gentry.

The Tory party is absolutely crammed with people suffering a smug sense of superiority over the masses. These people believe that they are special and a cut above the rest, because they're rich, because they've been Eton & Oxbridge educated, because they were born into establishment families, or perhaps (like Iain Duncan Smith) because they suffer a misanthropic hatred for most of humanity. This sense of superiority and entitlement that pervades the Tory party allows them to believe that the "lower orders" are just a gigantic hoard of pig-ignorant cretins that can be abused, lied to and easily fobbed off with the most implausible nonsense.One example of this assumption of absolute stupidity is the way that the Tories have been constantly talking up their so-called "economic recovery" as if us "lower orders" are far too stupid to realise that we are far worse off than we were when the Tories snuck into power in 2010.

The Tories seem to believe that if they point to some cherry-picked and grotesquely manipulated statistics (GDP figures, headline unemployment rate, house price inflation figures) us plebs are so damn stupid that we'll forget all about their unprecidented campaign of wage repression, their massive cuts to in-work social security, their defunding of our essential services, their attacks on our labour rights and our rights to express dissent, their ideological destruction of the justice system, their disgraceful sell-offs and give-aways of state infrastructure for far less than it's actually worth and their campaign of psychological torture against the disabled.

They really do think that they are so smart and superior, and us ordinary people are so stupid and gullible that they can tell us that we're all benefiting from this so-called "recovery" and we'll all simply believe it and flock to the polling stations to vote for them.

One of the most obvious problems with this "recovery" narrative is that there has been absolutely no "recession" or "austerity" for the rich, whilst the cuts and austerity measures have been borne by the poor and ordinary.

• The banks (that bankrupted themselves with their reckless gambling) have benefited from an estimated £1 trillion in bailouts (which are hidden outside the official national debt figures), by far the largest state subsidisation scheme in British history. [source]

• Since the financial sector collapse in 2008 the banks have paid out more than double the amount in bonuses than they've paid in corporation tax. [source]

• Staff at RBS (which is 82% owned by the taxpayer) were handed £607 million in bonuses in 2013, despite the bank losing another £5.2 billion (which brought their post crash losses to £34 billion). [source]

• The 5% of wealthiest families have received 40% of the economic benefit of the Bank of England's £375 billion Quantitative Easing money creation schemes. [source]

• The rate of corporation tax on large corporations has been slashed by 40% from 28% in 2010 to 20% in 2015. [source]

• Since the Tories came to power the directors of the FTSE 100 companies have enjoyed an unprecedented period of wage inflation, which peaked in 2011 with an average annual wage rise of 49%! [source]

• The average worker has suffered the longest sustained period of wage repression since records began. [source]

• Private health companies that donate to the Tory party have received £1.5 billion worth of contracts since the Tories carved the NHS wide open for privatisation (like they promised that they wouldn't). [source]

• The UK loses an estimated £120 billion per year to tax-dodging, yet the Tories have opened up even more tax loopholes for British companies and worked tirelessly to create the ludicrous narrative that welfare spending is to blame for the crisis, not reckless financial sector gambling and rampant tax-dodging. [source]

• In the very same week that the Tories introduced "Bedroom Tax" to financially penalise some of the poorest and most vulnerable people in society, they handed the 13,000 UK based income millionaires an average tax break of £100,000 per year! [source]

These facts blast the Tory narrative that "we're all in this together" out of the water. They rely on the hope that the "lower orders" are too stupid and too ill-informed (thanks to the complicity of the mainstream media) to understand what is really going on. The super-rich establishment class haven't suffered austerity and wage repression, and in fact, they've been making themselves richer than ever before.

In the words of Mark McGowan "This isn't a recession, it's a robbery".

There is an absolute mountain of evidence out there that the Tories (assisted by their odious Lib-Dem sidekicks) have been up to their usual trick of making the rich minority richer and everyone else poorer, yet some delusional people still continue to vote Tory. It seems that the Tories can do whatever they like, and some 30% of regular voters will still vote for them and their agenda of deliberately widening the poverty gap in order to serve the interests of the tiny establishment minority.

I'll conclude with a prediction: After four years of helping the tiny super-rich establishment minority enrich themselves at a faster rate than ever against a backdrop of brutal Tory austerity for the poor and ordinary, the Tories will take their foot off the necks of the "lower orders" (in the form of a rise in the minimum wage, a cut in VAT ...) in the months before the 2015 election in the hope that they can create an artificial "feel-good factor" to win them the next general election. The idea being that the "lower orders" will be so relieved to be able to breathe properly for a while, that they'll forget who has been standing on their neck for four years, then flock to the polling stations to vote for their oppressors.

I hope you won't be one of them ...

 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.

More articles from
 ANOTHER ANGRY VOICE 

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

David Cameron's internet censorship plans
     

The economic case against tax-dodging 
   
George Osborne's economic blunders
                    
The Tory "War on Justice"

             

The JP Morgan plan for Europe
         
The "unpatriotic left" fallacy
                
The "All in This Together" fallacy

The mainstream media oligopoly
           

George Osborne: Liar or tax-dodger

Regular readers will know that I am not a fan of Tory Chancellor of the Exchequer George Osborne. 

I believe that Osborne is an economic extremist, and that his ideological austerity experiment has seriously damaged the UK economy. 

I am not alone in believing that Osborne is an economic illiterate following a defunct and economically destructive set of economic theories that he doesn't even understand. Even his own Office For Budget Responsibility Recklessness now admit that Osborne's austerity experiment is entirely responsible for the appalling stagnation of the UK economy.

Not only is George Osborne an economic illiterate pursuing an extremely destructive ideological agenda, he is also dishonest. One example of his dishonesty can be seen in the difference between his public pronouncements on tax-dodging, and his actions.

Osborne has repeatedly claimed that he is tough on tax-dodging (tax evasion and aggressive tax avoidance), activities he has described as "morally repugnant", however his actual policies belie a completely different agenda. In January 2013 he opened up a new set of tax loopholes to allow UK based companies to avoid paying their taxes in 3rd World countries by siphoning their profits into tax havens. Also let's not forget that the Tory party is bankrolled by donations from numerous tax-dodgers.

When it comes to George Osborne's own tax affairs we come across another demonstration of his dishonesty.

When Osborne announced that he was going to give an average £100,000 a year tax break to the 13,000 income millionaires in the UK by cutting the tap rate of income tax from 50p to 45p, he repeatedly insisted that he was not wealthy enough to personally benefit from this tax cut.

In March 2012 he insisted that he would not benefit from his own tax break because he does not earn more than the £150,000 threshold. Here's what he told the BBC:

"My salary is less than the £150,000 threshold... so I am not personally affected."

It is true that his ministerial salary is lower than the £150,00 income tax threshold, but this would only be a valid point if that was his only source of income, which it isn't.

At the time he made this statement it was pointed out by many that he had other sources of income including the rental income from the Osborne family home in Notting Hill and returns on his 15% stake in the family wallpaper business.

In November 2013 the rental income from the Osborne family home was revealed as £127,400 per year, which works out at over ten thousand pounds per month!

This means that either George Osborne is lying, and he is "personally affected" by the cut in the top rate of income tax because his annual income is above £150,000, or he's figured out some way of avoiding taxation on this substantial rental income.

Whichever is the case, it doesn't look good for Gideon Osborne. He's either been lying about not being personally affected by his own tax cut for the super wealthy, or he is using creative accounting in order to avoid a phenomenal amount of tax, which in his own words is a "morally repugnant" thing to do.

 Another Angry Voice  is a not-for-profit page which generates absolutely no revenue from advertising and accepts no money from corporate or political interests. The only source of revenue for  Another Angry Voice  is the  PayPal  donations box (which can be found in the right hand column, fairly near the top of the page). If you could afford to make a donation to help keep this site going, it would be massively appreciated.

 

More articles from
 ANOTHER ANGRY VOICE 
    
George Osborne's economic extremism
    
The Office for Budget Recklessness
           
Workfare, neoclassical economics and tabloid mindsets
          
George Osborne's 3rd World tax loophole
              
The economic case against tax-dodging
               
The myth of right-wing patriotism

           
The Tory "War on Justice"

        

What is ... Wage Repression?

  

The "all in this together" fallacy

    

George Osborne's economic blunders

                                            

How to get rich in Tory Britain

The economy is still in recession for the vast majority of us, but a tiny economic minority are getting rich faster than ever, and the Tories are convinced that this enrichment of the minority equates to an "economic recovery". In this article I'm going to give you a sure-fire tip for escaping your worsening economic circumstances and getting rich too.

The reason that the economy is still in recession for the majority of us is an economic policy called income repression, which is being administered by the Chancellor of the Exchequer George Osborne. If you have a job that pays less than a six figure salary, the chances are that you are getting poorer, because every single month since the Tories came to power, the average wage has grown at a slower rate than the rate of inflation. This means that your purchasing power has been diminished every single month and you are getting poorer and poorer in real terms.

People on low wages have been affected particularly badly, because as well as their wages shrinking in real terms, George Osborne and the Tories are also repressing in-work benefits such as Working Tax Credits, Child Tax Credits, Income Support, Council Tax Relief, Statutory Sick Pay, Maternity Pay and Paternity Pay. These dramatic cuts in the social security payments that are used to top up poverty wages are driving millions of low-income workers into even greater poverty.

Some of the poorest working people have experienced terrible poverty on Zero-Hours Contracts (which have spread like wildfire since the global financial sector meltdown), growing numbers of people are working for less than the minimum wage and many tens of thousands of people a month have been compelled under the threat of absolute destitution to work for nothing more than their benefits at highly profitable corporations under Iain Duncan Smith's Workfare compulsory labour schemes. One of the side effects of these unpaid workfare schemes is that they further drive down wages and working conditions for other working people, especially in the retail, elderly care and low-skilled manufacturing and service sectors.

The number of children living in poverty has risen by 300,000 in just one year and the disabled, the unemployed, pensioners and students from poor and ordinary backgrounds have also taken an economic battering in the last three years of Tory rule.

Everyone who is not experiencing massive wage inflation is being hit by the effect of high inflation. It should be absolutely obvious that the official inflation statistics are misleadingly low. House prices in London are growing more per day than the average worker earns for a whole day's work, rents are up, utility bills are skyrocketing, public transport, food, fuel and childcare have all risen in cost much faster than inflation, yet the official inflation statistics are manipulated to show a relatively low level of general inflation. Then there's hidden inflation, the fact that your mayonnaise jar or cereal packet just got smaller but the price stayed the same, and the fact that your beef burgers and lasagnas have been filled out with cheap horse meat from Romania, instead of British beef. 

Whilst this has been going on, George Osborne has been slashing taxes for corporations and the super-rich. His unprecidented cuts in the rate of corporation tax have created an artificial boom in corporate profits, fueling record dividends and the obscene inflation of corporate pay. The directors of the FTSE100 companies took home an average 33% pay rise in 2010, a 49% pay rise in 2011 and another 27% pay rise in 2012. On top of all of these extra earnings, George Osborne also handed them a lucrative tax cut in April 2013, meaning that the 13,000 income millionaires in the UK get an average £100,000 boost in their spending power.

Then there's Quantitative Easing; the £375 billion Bank of England money creation scheme that provided 40% of the extra spending power to the 5% of richest households, and eroded away the wealth of people with savings and pension schemes. This isn't just idle speculation, the Bank of England's own research confirms it.

Well, I guess you're eagerly awaiting the economic tip I teased you with in the intro, so here it is.

I've spotted a correlation between a certain type of person and good economic fortune under George Osborne's stewardship of the economy. 

George Osborne's father-in-law benefited for a massive reduction in the corporation tax rate for fracking companies, because he works as a lobbyist for numerous energy companies with financial interests in the fracking business. Then the Hedge Fund that employs George Osborne's best man was awarded £50 million worth of undervalued shares in Royal Mail, landing them a whopping profit of £25 million within a week as the shares rose up towards their true market value.

It seems that being a guest at George Osborne's wedding is a key to economic success in "austerity Britain".

You probably think that there's a glaring logical flaw in my advice; the fact that you weren't a guest at George Osborne's wedding in 1998. But don't worry, that's not a problem. In April 2013 the Tory party retroactively changed the law of the land in order to avoid compensating the victims of Iain Duncan Smith's unlawful mandatory unpaid workfare schemes. This means that Tories like George Osborne are quite willing to accept retroactive revisions to reality, so all you need do is retroactively declare that you were a guest at George Osborne's wedding in 1998 and then call him to demand your share of the economic favours he's handing out.

 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.

More articles from
 ANOTHER ANGRY VOICE 
     
What is ... Wage Repression?
     
The "Making Work Pay" fallacy
    
Workfare, neoclassical economics and tabloid mindsets
    
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George Osborne's economic extremism
            
What is ... Quantitative Easing?

           
Fracking Tories

            
David Howell's and the fracking business
      
Serve the rich, smash the poor
            

The Retroactive Workfare Bill  

           
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George Osborne's economic blunders