{"id":5561,"date":"2015-09-09T16:18:13","date_gmt":"2015-09-09T15:18:13","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/unitelive.org\/?p=5561"},"modified":"2015-09-09T16:18:13","modified_gmt":"2015-09-09T15:18:13","slug":"shrinking-the-state","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/unitelive.test.igniteamt.com\/?p=5561","title":{"rendered":"Shrinking the state"},"content":{"rendered":"
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Unite has described the government\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s spending cuts as \u00e2\u20ac\u015bideologically driven nonsense\u00e2\u20ac\u0165 after George Osborne’s plans were roundly criticised by a former head of the civil service.<\/p>\n

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At a meeting in Parliament Lord Turnbull accused the Chancellor of using arguments for spending cuts as a \u00e2\u20ac\u015bsmokescreen\u00e2\u20ac\u0165 for the Tories real mission to shrink the state.<\/p>\n

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The crossbench peer, who once served as principal private secretary to Margaret Thatcher, effectively told Osborne he was being less than straight with the public over the cuts.<\/p>\n

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Economic fallacy<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n

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\u00e2\u20ac\u015bThe idea that this debt is impoverishing people is, I think, an economic fallacy,\u00e2\u20ac\u0165 he said.<\/p>\n

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Lord Turnbull added: \u00e2\u20ac\u015bI think what you\u00e2\u20ac\u2122re doing, actually that you want a smaller state. There are good arguments for that, and some people don\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t agree with that \u00e2\u20ac\u201c but you don\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t tell people that\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s what you\u00e2\u20ac\u2122re doing.<\/p>\n

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Smokescreen<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n

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\u00e2\u20ac\u015bWhat you tell them is this story about impoverishment of debt, which I think is a smokescreen. I think the whole idea of the urgency and the extent of reducing debt, I just can\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t see the justification of it,\u00e2\u20ac\u0165 Lord Turnbull went on to say.<\/p>\n

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The peer, who serves on the Audit Committee, the Economic Affairs Committee, and was a member of the Chancellor\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s 2012-13 Banking Standards Commission, ridiculed the government\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s economic message.<\/p>\n

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\u00e2\u20ac\u015bWhy is it so wrong to borrow if you are creating assets at the same time, why are you not looking at the total balance sheet?\u00e2\u20ac\u0165 he told Osborne.<\/p>\n

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The Conservative manifesto commits to total cuts of public spending in real terms by 1 per cent a year by 2016-17 and 2017-18. According to the Institute for Fiscal Studies, the vast majority of these will be directed at unprotected social security spending.<\/p>\n

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Nonsense\u00c2\u00a0<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n

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\u00e2\u20ac\u015bLord Turnbull has exposed George Osborne\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s voodoo economics as nothing more than ideologically driven nonsense,” Unite political director Jennie Formby said.<\/p>\n

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\u00e2\u20ac\u015bAnd of course he\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s not alone –\u00c2\u00a0 increasing numbers of leading economists have poured scorn on the notion that a country\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s economy should be run in the same way as a household budget.<\/p>\n

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\u00e2\u20ac\u015bSo he\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s right to say that the Chancellor and the Prime Minister are hell bent on reducing the size of the state because it\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s in their political DNA.<\/p>\n

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\u00e2\u20ac\u015bNo one other than senior Tories now seriously believes in the austerity agenda, or that swingeing spending cuts designed to hit low income families and the poor hardest are a good idea.\u00e2\u20ac\u0165<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Unite has described the government\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s spending cuts as \u00e2\u20ac\u015bideologically driven nonsense\u00e2\u20ac\u0165 after George Osborne’s plans were roundly criticised by a former head of the civil service.   At a meeting in Parliament Lord Turnbull accused the Chancellor of using arguments for spending cuts as a \u00e2\u20ac\u015bsmokescreen\u00e2\u20ac\u0165 for the Tories real mission to shrink the state. […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[1],"tags":[76,105,196,178],"wps_subtitle":"Tories accused of hiding agenda","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/unitelive.test.igniteamt.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5561"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/unitelive.test.igniteamt.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/unitelive.test.igniteamt.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/unitelive.test.igniteamt.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/unitelive.test.igniteamt.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=5561"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"https:\/\/unitelive.test.igniteamt.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5561\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":5570,"href":"https:\/\/unitelive.test.igniteamt.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5561\/revisions\/5570"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/unitelive.test.igniteamt.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=5561"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/unitelive.test.igniteamt.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=5561"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/unitelive.test.igniteamt.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=5561"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}