Them & Us


Uncaring

Labour and Tory/Lib Dem governments have slashed spending on elderly care by 20% over the last decade. £1,188 was being spent in 2003-4 per person over the age of 65. By 2013-14 that had fallen to £951.


Black gold to virtual gold

Apple, the technology corporation, announced record quarterly profits in the last three months of $18 billion, higher than oil giant ExxonMobil’s previous quarterly record set in 2012.

Currently, Apple is sitting on $178 billion in cash – enough to run the National Health Service. But despite all this money the hi-tech giant only paid £11.4 million in British corporation tax in 2013-14 despite sales of £10 billion.


Education cuts

Prime Minister David Cameron has admitted that English schools face a 10% real terms budget cut after the next election should the Tories win. Schools already face massive budget pressures not least because the government has promoted divisive ‘free schools’.

Established by former education minister Michael Gove, free schools are independent of local authorities, have their own admissions policies and employ unqualified teaching staff. Last year the government stole £400 million from the basic need budget to plug a gaping £800 million hole in the free schools scheme.


Rising homelessness

Ten empty homes for every homeless family in England. That is the shocking headline underlining the steady rise in homelessness since 2011 after nearly a decade of decline. Some 60,940 households were placed in temporary accommodation last September while 635,127 homes lay empty.

House building is at its lowest since the 1920s.


Social cleansing

The Tories will reinforce their twisted social cleansing housing policy if reelected in May. As well as abolishing housing benefit for 18-21 year olds (see page 5) Cameron and Co intend to lower further the benefit cap by £3,000 a year, making unaffordable every three-bedroom social home provided by one housing association in the entire south east of the country. Moat housing association added that under the cap all two-bedroom homes would become unaffordable within six years.

However, Tory welfare minister Iain Duncan Smith won’t have any difficulty continuing to reside in his multi-bedroomed country mansion as it comes rent-free courtesy of his aristocratic family connections.