Them & Us


Cuts without end

Millionaire Chancellor George Osborne boasted to a baying audience at Tory party conference in October that he was slashing an extra £25 billion from public spending and a further £12 billion from welfare payments.

As devastating as this is for millions of low income people, the FT reports that £25 billion is actually an underestimate, that Osborne will demand an extra £48 billion of spending cuts due to paltry economic growth and falling tax revenues.


Who’s in charge?

Dominique Strauss-Kahn’s investment company, Leyne, Strauss-Kahn and Partners (LSK), has declared itself insolvent. The former head of the International Monetary Fund (who resigned from the IMF in 2011 over allegations of sexual assault and now faces a trial in 2015 for “aggravated pimping”) left LSK last month after he became aware of “excessive borrowing” by the group. And this guy used to be in charge of the world economy!

Clive Walder

BBC watch…

Far be it said that the BBC displays a right-wing bias. However, its website article on 5 November, which reported an academic study showing that EU migrants have made a £20 billion net contribution to the UK Treasury over the last decade, only quoted 88 words from Professor Christian Dustmann, co-author of the study; whereas the same article provided 121 words from reactionary Migration Watch chairman Sir Andrew Green rubbishing the study. No doubt this was done to ‘ensure balance’!


…Kick them out!

Meanwhile, the arch-Tory Daily Telegraph misused the study to run a headline which screamed: “£120 billion cost of Labour’s policy on immigration”. However, eight paragraphs later the Torygraph reports: “The native population made a negative contribution in 12 years during the period, a total of £591 billion, as the economy ran a deficit.”

Perhaps the “native population” should move to other EU countries to ease the burden on the UK economy?


Repatriate robots?

Despite regular announcements of massive job cuts by private sector employers, local authorities and the government, establishment parties, including Ukip, falsely blame migrant workers for ‘taking British jobs’.

Now it seems a third of all UK jobs (mainly those earning £30,000 or less a year) will be replaced by robotic and automated systems over the next 20 years as capitalism seeks to maximise its profits.

Can we expect to see TV images of Nigel Farage pouring a pint of beer over a computer?