Letter: Government’s cuts are the right option
Friday 12th November 2010, 6:00AM GMT.
Letter: As the Government begins to implement the decisions of the comprehensive spending review, there are many difficult and potentially painful consequences.
While these may be difficult decisions, I am in no doubt that they are the right decisions.
Labour left Britain with the biggest budget deficit in the developed world. According to recent IMF figures, the UK has the largest deficit of any G20 country in 2010. At £155 billion in 2009-10, the budget deficit was the largest in our peacetime history.
Consequently, we are spending £120 million every day just to pay off the interest on the debt.
The alternative of not dealing with this problem is to risk ending up like Greece with soaring interest rates and more jobs lost.
What is essential is each spending decision must be fair.
The Government will ensure those with the broadest shoulders bear the greatest burden through the combined impact of our tax, benefit and spending changes, in cash terms and as a proportion of their income.
Daniel Kawczynski MP
Member of Parliament for Shrewsbury and Atcham
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The banks have the broadest shoulders
and the biggest debts to the tax payer!?
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Excellent point!
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Gee. What happened?
Oh, I don’t know.
Why not ask Gordon Brown, the banker’s friend?
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The need to reduce the deficit is understood, but it could be a lot less painful if the banks and companies like Vodaphone, were properly taxed instead of being let off (Vodaphone’s £4 billion tax bill was virtually written off by the Treasury.) Equally, there is never any mention, not just of what we pay to the EU (our unelected President must have nice office furniture,) but of what we pay to EU citizens working in this country who are entitled to things like child benefit and working families tax credit after just 6 months here even though their families still reside somewhere else in europe. I should like to know what percentage of our £87 billion benefits bill is actually paid beyond our borders allowing others to live to a higher standard in their own country at our expense. I feel we’re being treated like idiots, Daniel.
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is the MP for shrewsbury trying to make sure he’s seen to be toeing the party line on the reason they’ve give for the cuts, but he has forgot to mention the many millions more we’ll be given to Brussels courtesy of his boss?
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Was the MP for Shrewbury one of the many of his party who cheered when the chancellor said 500,000 people would loose their jobs due to the spending cuts?
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I wrote to Daniel Kawczynski MP a while ago to ask what effect the cutting of child benefit will have on stay at home mothers entitlement to a state pension in later life.
His reponse was clearly a stock response and he had either not read my letter or understood the question.
So I ask again, Mr Kawczynski when my child benefit is cut, will you also be removing my state pension protection?
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Sarah, I found reading your letter very interesting, since I have exactly the same points to make about an email that I sent to my MP in Telford Mr M Pritchard, I did not got any reply from him until I chased for an answer and the answer he said was that he could not yet comment on the points raised.
I am annoyed that he failed to answer where the fairness was in system that they are implementing whereby someone on £44,000 would lose any child allowance and yet a couple with a combined figure of £86,000 would not – come on where is the fairness.
Where is the fairness in the increased foreign aid money – why do they not beleive in charity begins at home.
What are they doing about the Human rights act, they shouted very loud in opposition that they would change things, well they have the chance now and yet we hear nothing from them.
What about Europe – all talk and no action.
They are a great disappointment, as well as the MP’s that treat us with contempt and like idiots now that they have our vote – well what will people do next time ?
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Daniel Kawczynski’s statement ‘the budget deficit was the largest in our peacetime history’ reveals either a deep cynicism, or an astonishingly shallow understanding of the situation.
In simple terms, just about every government in modern history has inherited the ‘largest deficit in peacetime history’ in simple cash terms. Why? Because of inflation of course!
The only true measure of debt is by reference to GDP. In those terms, the total debt (62% of GDP) which includes 30% of GDP directly attributable to the bankers, is nothing like the highest we’ve seen in peacetime. If we take the net government debt (not including the bankers’ debt) is 32% – not a particularly high figure at all.
So why all the cuts? Well, it’s entirely to protect the interests of one sector of society who certainly won’t suffer the ‘difficult and potentially painful consequences’ – the very wealthiest, including of course, the bankers, of whom Daniel, curiously, says nothing.
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