British Public Experience the True Costs of Electing Madmen to Parliament
The British people will soon be experiencing the cost of electing a gaggle of madmen to parliament as domestic “budget cuts” begin to bite with a vengeance through massive job losses — while millions are spent “creating jobs” in Afghanistan.
Military budget cuts.According to a post-budget analysis by the Institute for Fiscal Studies (IFS), at least four in ten courts and police stations are to be closed down in terms of the budget cuts announced this week.In addition, the IFS said, government departments face enforced savings of at least 33 percent, and not the projected 25 percent.
This will mean, the IFS said, that 20,000 civilian staff and 4,000 community staff will be axed in the police forces alone.
The Ministry of Justice has already come clean on the rationalisation plans and released a proposal to close 40 percent of all courts and what they called “old fashioned police stations.”
In his budget speech, Chancellor George Osborne said there was a need to a “25 percent savings” in domestic spending so that “ministers can protect the NHS and overseas aid.”
The IFS report pointed out that to achieve this goal, domestic cuts in services to British people will see the Home Office, transport, higher education and housing budgets cut by 33 percent.
IFS director Robert Chote said the spending cuts planned by the coalition would more than reverse the entire increase in public spending under the 13 years of Labour.
“We are looking at the longest, deepest, sustained period of cuts to public services spending at least since World War II,” he was quoted as saying.
* Justice Secretary Kenneth Clarke also said that “millions” could be saved from the £2.2 billion prisons budget by “jailing fewer offenders and slashing sentences.”
Rather than going soft on crime, a sensible government would cut prison costs by simply deporting the 13.7 percent of all offenders who are foreign nationals.
The IFS said that if benefits were reduced by a further £13 billion, the average cut in departmental budgets “excluding health and overseas aid” would be 20 percent.
It said the Government was open to the charge that “putting aside announcements already made by Labour” the Budget hit the lowest paid hardest.
* * Meanwhile, the Department for International Development, which coordinates Britain’s foreign aid programme, has confirmed that International Development Secretary Andrew Mitchell will announce details of a new £200 million aid package to Afghanistan at a conference in Kabul on 20 July 2010.
This money is in addition to the £510 million already committed to Afghanistan to “make government more effective, create jobs and encourage economic growth, promote stability and development in Helmand and provide alternatives to poppy growing,” according to the DFID country programme.
