The Restoration? When are the poor going to get their money back?

not that I ever did mind!

I got an unsolicited email circular from Lib Dem Leader Nick Clegg today asking me if I wanted a £100 tax cut. He wasn't actually offering it but just asking me if I wanted it. Very much a 'jam tomorrow' offer This apparently would be my reward for coping with the suffering caused by their austerity programme. Nick says,


"Think of it as a workers’ bonus.  The British people have lived with austerity for three years. Your sacrifices are making it possible for us to fix the economy. This is your recovery and you deserve to feel the benefits – without delay."


  The message from Government is that we are now turning a corner and that 'growth' and a recovery  is supposedly happening. The problem is for many that this 'good news' is not relevant to them. Many of the people who have suffered the most are those for whom a £100 tax cut is utterly meaningless. The people who have had a bedroom tax imposed or who have lost disability benefits due to the punitive ATOS regime. For many of these people a £100 tax cut will never have any relevance at all. The justification for cutting peoples benefits was supposedly not at all ideological or a 'war on the poor' but because 'we're all in it together'. If that situation has changed and the Lib Dems can offer goodies shouldn't it be the poorest who benefit first?

Of course the right wing media would say its 'our taxes' that pay for these benefits but that ignores the fact that many people have worked and contributed taxes thoughout their lives and that many cannot find work because of their disability or because the work simply isn't there.

With thousands of public sector workers around the country about to become unemployed because of government cuts it seems crazy that the Lib Dems are floating the idea of tax reductions. It has all the hallmarks of a cynical gimmick and is not the behavior you would expect from a responsible party of government but then that is the Liberal Democrats for you.