From The Evening Standard (6 December, page 71):
Osborne's Autumn Statement was the latest in the series of giveaways for the Baby Boomers, homeowners, landlords and financial sector funded by slaps in the face for the under-forties.
He actually boasted that house prices were set to boom just in time for the next election, which is the whole point of his Help To Buy scheme. He announced more council-house sell offs.
He placed a cap on working age welfare spending while confirming that current old age pensions would continue to rise faster than wages*. He admitted that he would continue to run significant deficits for the foreseeable future.
He promised a real-terms reduction in Business Rates to enable commercial landlords to push through higher rents in future and subsidies for large residential landlords.
I suppose the only good news is that he has generously given today's young a few extra years in which to pay off the higher rents and mortgages and the ballooning national debt by announcing increases to the state pension age.
Mark Wadsworth, Young People's Party
(Thanks to Joe Momberg for assistance, this is the sanitised version of my post of yesterday).
* It gets worse. Since compiling that list, it turns out that the Lib-Cons want to withdraw benefits from under-25s who lack "basic skills". I bet they wouldn't dare do that to pensioners, would they? And it's a Catch 22 - having got the necessary bit of paper, the Lib Cons will then be able to refuse to pay them benefits yet again on the grounds that they are now qualified and clearly not trying hard enough to find a job.
No comments:
Post a Comment