The Lie Con Government

It seems from the opinion polls that the Tories/Fib Dems are winning the spin war, and boy do they spin. The difference between Labour spin and Tory spin is that with the media's help, Tory spinners get away with it.

They have managed to persuade people that; 1. Labour caused the global banking crash and; 2. That the poor and public services will have to pay for it.

The Tories are using some very poor arguments and seemingly getting away with it. They argued this week that making tens of millions of people entitled to child benefit have to fill in forms to get it will be helpful to them. The Tories are attacking the principle of universal benefits, and the same argument (that the rich don't need it) can be used against free bus passes, winter fuel payments, and even things like the NHS.

The universal principle exists for a reason - namely that the savings from excluding the rich are minimal and tend in any case to be overshadowed by the extra cost of the bureaucracy of means testing the thing, not to mention the stigma and problems of low take up from those who really do need the benefit.

In the election campaign David Cameron accused Labour of lying when they said the Tories had plans to attack universal benefits. Who is lying now? Strangely the support of the Tory press has managed to keep public opinion on side. This is very worrying. The Lib Dems and Tory media are providing cover for what is shaping up to be the most right-wing government since the 1930s. By comparison Thatcher is looking almost like a social democrat.

And to top it all, I doubt this government will even reduce the deficit. Let's see if I am wrong. Labour has got to kill this lie soon, if it is not already too late.

Why We Should Pay Benefits To Top Earners.

Ian Duncan-Smith calls it 'bonkers' to pay benefits to those earning £50,000 plus. It sounds great to take these benefits away from the rich doesn't it? Some people will go away (helped by the media) into thinking the Tories are doing something progressive for a change.

But instead of headlines like 'Tories withdraw benefits from middle England', lets rephrase this to something more descriptive - 'Tories hire huge army of new bureacrats to administer intrusive complicated forms to claim anything from a bus pass to child benefit' or 'Administrators cost more than 5% saving of withdrawing benefits from middle class'.

Not only is this not progressive, it is actually regressive. To save money the Tories will have to take benefits from people earning far less than £50,000. Either IDS is a complete idiot or his real aim is to do away with these benefits altogether. In which case the coalition should be honest and campaign on that, rather than wasting money on even more bureaucracy and creating a new stigma and new obstacles for those people who now have to waste their time filling in forms about their income for benefits they use to receive automatically. Inevitably the most in need will suffer most, while the rich might think they are doing a good deed in losing what to them is a small amount.