George Osborne – The Odious Toff Who’s Not Fit To Run A Tuck Shop

Dribbling little posh boy George Osborne was cut loose from nanny’s apron strings and allowed out of his inheritance funded parlour yesterday to unleash a stream of lies and abuse directed at those on low incomes.

The heir to the Baronetcy of Ballentaylor and Ballylemon made the astonishing claim that unemployment benefits of £71 a week are generous, showing just how out of touch him and his deluded party truly are.  After this months benefit changes, by the time claimants have paid their bedroom tax, council tax and essential bills, many will be left with nothing at all to buy food.

Even if Gideon were telling the truth yesterday, and he wasn’t, his vile claim that 90% of working people will be better off as a result of this months social security slashing reveals little more than his utter contempt for those not born with a silver spoon rammed down their delicate throats.  What the Chancellor is really admitting is that ten percent of working families will be worse off due to his Government, and those families are already the poorest in the country.

This ten percent were amongst the silent crowd of workers he hectored at as he visited a supermarket distribution depot yesterday.  Many of those workers will be victims of this months benefits chaos, which applies to those in and out of work alike.  And these same workers will see tax credits and housing benefits reduced in real terms year on year,wiping out any trivial gains from the raising of the tax threshold.  It is little wonder that his audience remained silent and contemptuous throughout, no doubt having been threatened with the sack should they raise their voices.

Even his attempt to divide those on low incomes by talking about claimants on £26,000 a year was met with stony faces.  Low paid workers in the South of England are only too aware that  some claimants are forced to pay huge sums to landlords due to the chronic lack of social housing.  They know this because many of them are paying the same sky high rents and are as just as dependent on fast disappearing housing benefits as any out of work benefit claimant.

In fact Osborne’s only answer to low paid workers is to brag that at least he’s destroying the lives of unemployed, unwell or disabled people as well.  Picking on those least able to defend themselves seems to be a competition sport to the Bullingdon bullies in the cabinet.

But it is clearly not just those out of work that are in the Chancellor’s firing line.  In truth Gideon couldn’t really care less whether those on low incomes are working – if you are poor you are scum according to the trust fund kid with a four million pound fortune.

It matters not at all that those people he has condemned to poverty are the ones who empty his bins, clean his daddy’s offices and will wipe his swollen rancid arse when he gets old.  After all these aren’t real people to Gideon.  In his fevered mind they are merely a servile class of plebs, only existing to do the work the rich are too lazy to even consider, like making their own beds or scrubbing their own shit from their toilets.

Gideon, David and Nick live in such pampered privilege it is unlikely they’ve ever had a sincere conservation with anyone who isn’t rich.  And it is this effete bubble of privilege that has allowed the most inept fools possibly in history to fluke their way into government.  This bubble means Gideon and David have little idea how talentless they are, as their bribed back-slapping city boy chums cheer their every move.  Osborne got his job because the business owning class hailed him as a financial genius, yet any chinless fool could claim to be an economic expert to these clowns.  All you need to say is tax the rich less and fuck the poor and the jeering toads will fete you as a hero of the upper classes.

Yet Osborne’s shambolic austerity drive has destroyed the economy and he is more determined than ever to make the poorest pay for his failure.  He is not fit to run a tuck shop and yet he has been let loose on the nation’s finances.  The man is utterly incompetent, but he is very, very posh.  To most Tories that means he has a divine right to rule.

Follow me on twitter @johnnyvoid

Higher Rents And Less Council Houses: Osborne’s Blundering Cure For The Housing Crisis

In under two weeks hundreds of thousands of the least well off people in the UK will find a shortfall in their Housing Benefits due to the bedroom tax.  At the same time the benefit cap will be introduced in three London boroughs, which will see thousands of London families no longer able to pay the rent.  This chaos is to be extended throughout the UK from July.

Changes to Council Tax benefits also come into effect next month leaving people living on as little as £72 a week (or less in some cases) now eligible to pay Council Tax in many parts of the UK.  The Benefits Uprating Bill currently passing through the House of Lords will see Housing Benefit rises capped at 1%, despite rents rising by over ten times that figure in some areas.  Along with cuts to in and out of work benefits, and the public sector pay freeze, many of the lowest income households are due to see that income shrink on an annual basis.

From October this year Universal Credit will start to be expanded across the UK.  Benefit sanctions, meaning people left with nothing and currently running at about half a million a year, are likely to rise due to ever increasing benefit conditionality.  Hundreds of thousands more are being impoverished by the Atos regime for sickness and disability benefits.  A fifth of disabled people are aset to lose Disability Living Allowance over the coming years.

Universal Credit will feature ‘direct payments’, meaning claimants can no longer have housing benefits sent to direct to landlords.  This had led to rocketing rent arrears everywhere it has been tried as claimants already forced to choose between heating and eating are given a large monthly cash payment to pay the rent.  Instead it pays for nappies, or a broken washing machine, or debt repayments to high street loan sharks.  Housing Associations have warned they are cutting the number of new homes available due to stockpiling cash reserves to pay for the inevitable spate of evictions.  So called ‘affordable’ house building collapsed last year.

Even before these changes every measure of homelessness is rising.  Already many councils can’t cope.  Westminster Council is housing families in £3k a week hotels after they have been evicted due to the housing benefit cuts which have already taken place.

Anyone who has been paying attention will point to both the chronic shortage of council housing and soaring rents as two of the key factors behind the housing crisis.  George Osborne’s answer to the problem is higher rents and less council houses.

Osborne yesterday extended the discount for London tenants who wish to buy their council property to £100,000.  What little social housing remains the Chancellor is desperate to sell off.  Once all right to buy houses sold had to be replaced by a new council house.  This rarely happened in practice, but that was the idea.  But even that has been thrown out of the window.  New homes designed to replace those flogged off will have rents set at 80% of the local market and fixed term tenancies.  The long established tradition of genuinely affordable housing on secure tenancies managed by Local Authorities – and often making them a profit – has been glibly demolished by this Government.

Not content with this Osborne has also introduced a series of measures which risk wildly inflating the housing market even further.  Gideon wants to help more people buy houses by making them more expensive.  His Government backed mortgage subsidy, even available for those looking to purchase half a million pound mansions, is likely to lead to a bonanza for landlords.  Whilst he has claimed this new scheme will not be on offer for specifically ‘buy to let’ mortgages, he seems relaxed about it being available to those who already have one or even more houses.  Which simply means a little paper shuffling on the part of grasping landlords and bankers and the scheme will end up being used to buy properties to rent out.  Or leave empty as in the case of some of the most valuable properties in London, bought up as investments with laundered money and then left uninhabited.

The only predictable outcome to Osborne’s scheme is higher rents in both the  social and private sector.  For now Housing Benefits – meaning tax payers -  will pick up the tab for shoveling billions into the pockets of landlords.  The already much maligned housing benefit bill could be set to soar to levels that can barely be imagined now.

According to The Guardian, Osborne’s plan to avoid this could be to cap social security spending if they win the next election.  Should this happen then it seems inconceivable that the current legal protection to prevent children, pensioners and disabled people from street homelessness could be maintained.   It will be just too expensive.  This is the choice the free market offers on housing.  Tens of thousands of homeless children or tens of billions paid to landlords by the state.

Of course this whole tragic mess could be halted overnight if everybody stopped paying their rent.

Follow me on twitter @johnnyvoid

George Osborne’s Credit Card Budget

George Osborne maxed out his political credit card today with a benefits bonanza for bosses and a middle class housing hand-out all to be paid for by unspecified cuts in 2015.

A range of measures, including corporation tax cuts (Osborne’s dad will be pleased) and Fannie Mae style mortgages for people wanting to upgrade to £600,000 mansions, will no doubt buy Osborne a few headlines.  But he will pay in 2015 when yet more savage cuts – including no doubt more social security slashing – plunge even more people into desperate poverty.

Of course when it comes to public sector workers (currently on strike today – solidarity and all that you benefit sanctioning bastards), Osborne couldn’t wait to wield the axe.  Low paid public sector workers will now face a triple whammy of extended wage freezes along with the already announced real term cuts to tax credits and housing benefit.

For those workers, and the millions other who are set to see in work benefits raided on a yearly basis, the raising of the personal allowance will be of little comfort.

Osborne ploughed ahead with his plans to create mass homelessness by extending the Right To Buy scheme, meaning less homes for those with least.  Still not to worry now that Jemima and Tarquin can upgrade their property investment using a government sponsored loan instead of dipping into the latte-slurping fund.

And for the rest of us, all we got was a trivial cut in the price of beer that the breweries probably won’t bother to pass on.  Let them get pissed is Osborne’s response to the crisis.  And obviously this cut only applies to beer, not wine or spirits, because beer’s what the plebs drink.  A more transparent attempt to neutralise last year’s pasty tax shambles would be hard to imagine.

Once again there is nothing in this budget for the very poorest.  The bosses on the other hand will be laughing all the way to the bank.

Follow me on twitter @johnnyvoid

George Osborne’s Benefit Bullshitting Hides His True Agenda

Hidden beneath the benefit bashing which has dominated the obsessed Tory Party Conference, George Osborne’s speech yesterday was not just the attack on out of work claimants it appeared to be.

One big lie has dominated the Tory debate on welfare and the chancellor was only too happy to repeat it yesterday.  Twice in his speech he claimed that both young people or families are “better off on benefits than they would be in work.”

This crude attempt at divide and rule has become a Tory mantra ever since this Government weren’t elected.  And it’s not true.

A person under 25 working for the minimum wage for 37 hours a week receives  a net salary of £204.36.  Jobseekers Allowance for those under 25 is £56.25.    The maximum available Housing Benefit for someone under 25 in Birmingham (for example) is  £55.

This means that a young person in work, in almost all areas of the UK, is almost twice as well off as someone on unemployment benefits. Even in expensive Kensington & Chelsea the maximum Housing Benefit payment to those under 25 without children is £123.50.  This is an exception due to the staggering cost of properties in a London borough which also has it’s share of children growing up in poverty.  However a young person working in this borough (on minimum wage) is entitled to £30.49 a week in Housing Benefit.  Or at least they were.  George Osborne plans to change this.

The situation for working families with children is equally clear.  Sadly even some workers at the lower end of the pay scale have bought into the relentless bullshit and bemoaned how they would be better off on benefits.  They wouldn’t.  No-one is.  This is another lie and it’s time to nail it once and for all.

A single parent with two children living in Birmingham and renting in the private sector would receive  maximum possible benefits of £348.14 (over a third of this would be in Housing Benefit payments which go to landlords).  A single parent working on minimum wage for 37 hours a week, in otherwise the exact same circumstances, would receive a total of £445.86 in net wages and in work benefits.*

It’s important to note both these calculations are based on the minimum wage.  As wages rise Housing Benefit is reduced at a tapered rate, meaning the difference between a better off earner and someone on benefits becomes even greater.

In work benefits are now under attack like never before.  Working Tax Credits have already been stripped away for parents working part time.  Housing Benefit has been subject to caps and set at a lower rate whilst for those under 25, whether in or out of work, it is seemingly to be abolished completely.  Disability Living Allowance which pays for vital care and equipment for working and non working disabled people alike is to be cut by a fifth.  Part time or self-employed workers who do not earn enough and depend on some in work benefits could face workfare when Universal Credit is introduced next year.

George Osborne may pretend to aim his cuts at the mythical feckless but this hides another quite different agenda.  Osborne is attacking not just benefit claimants, but low waged workers.  His contempt for the poor goes far beyond the tabloid rhetoric aimed at so called scroungers.  If you aren’t rich, he’s not interested.   As Osborne himself said in his speech:

“Whether it’s the owner of the corner shop staying open until midnight to support their family.

Or the teacher prepared to defy her union and stay late to take the after-school club.

Or the commuter who leaves home before the children are up, and comes back long after they have gone to bed, because they want a better life for them.

Or the pensioner, who has saved all their life, and doesn’t want to spend it all as they want to pass something on to their children.

Or the entrepreneur who doesn’t cash out and pack up, but devotes their flair and energy to building the next success story.

They are all part of one nation – one nation working together to get on.

That is the nation we represent.

These are the people I serve as Chancellor.”

Not bus drivers, or classroom assistants or call centre workers.  Not pensioners who’ve worked their whole lives and are dependent on Housing Benefit to keep a roof over their heads.  Unusually for tory scum, not even the poor bastards getting limbs shot off whilst earning a pittance in Afghanistan.

Instead small business owners, large business owners and middle class commuters who can afford to not only pay huge rail fares but live in the leafy commuter belt (and when did neglecting your children become an aspiration?).  Or rich pensioners like George Osborne’s dad who hoard their money away so their wealth and privilege is passed onto the squirming vermin they’ve spawned.  And professional public sector workers.  But only if they are prepared to scab.

These are the people George Osborne governs for.  And no-one else.

*These figures represent claimants eligible for Job Seekers Allowance or Income Support, the two main out of work benefits.  They include Council Tax Benefit, Housing Benefits, Child Benefit, Child Tax Credit and Working Tax Credit (for those in work).  They do not include the sickness or disability benefit Employment Support Allowance (ESA).  A single parent with two kids qualifying for the support group for ESA – meaning a person assessed as being unable to ever work again or someone being treated for cancer – would receive a total of £396.99 a week in benefits compared to £445.86 total income for someone in minimum wage work.

The Tories on Drugs

Theresa May on drugs : “I have a very tough view on drugs.

I think there are far too many people who think drugs is something you can do without it having an impact, but it does have an impact.”

May was responding to this week’s call from the chair of the Advisory Council for the Misuse of Drugs, Prof Les Iversen, that people caught in possession of drugs should not face criminal records.

David Cameron on drugs: “I’m allowed to have had a private life before politics in which we make mistakes and we do things that we should not and we are all human and we err and stray.”

Boris Johnson on drugs: “It was jolly nice.”

Louise Mensch on drugs: “Although I do not remember the specific incident, this sounds highly probable… since I was in my twenties, I’m sure it was not the only incident of the kind.”

Francis Maude on drugs: “It was hard to go through Cambridge in the 70s without doing it a few times.”

Oliver Letwin on drugs: “At Cambridge, I was a very pretentious student. I grew a beard and took up a pipe. On one occasion some friends put some dope in a pipe I was smoking. It had absolutely no effect on me at all. I don’t inhale pipes.”

Tim Yeo on drugs: “I was offered it on occasion and enjoyed it. I think it can have a much pleasanter experience than having too much to drink.”

George Osborne on drugs:

The law on drugs: “The maximum sentences for possession of each class of drug are:

• up to seven years in prison or an unlimited fine (or both) for a Class A drug
• up to five years in prison or an unlimited fine (or both) for a Class B drug
• up to two years in prison or an unlimited fine (or both) for a Class C drug“

If They Come For Our Pasties We’ll Come For Their Wall Paper Shops!

A call has gone out to take the pasty row to the doors of George Osborne’s family business this Wednesday 11th April.  Assorted miscreants will gather outside Osborne & Little on the Kings Road in Chelsea from noon armed only with righteous indignation, and Greggs pasties.

Osborne & Little is Gideon Osborne’s daddy’s posh wallpaper shop.  Sir Peter Osborne and his mummy, Felicity Alexandra Loxton-Peacock, both worked very hard to get Gideon where he is today.  This paid for the privilege and private education that has allowed their wretched spawn to run rampant with the economy.  Like the rest of this toff Government, Gideon Osborne has never had a proper job.  All his millions came from mum and dad.  If he’d been to a comprehensive school he’d be little more than some creepy shyster trying to flog vacuum cleaners from door to door or working behind the counter of a high street loan shark.  Think Ian Beale without the chip shop.  The type of person who answers unsolicited emails from African dignitaries or sends off for Get Rich Quick schemes he found in the classifieds of Nuts magazines.  Far from his previous cossetted existence of cocaine and high class hookers, he’d be wanking off over phone sex lines he rang whilst round at his mates house and nicking his Nan’s sleeping pills.

Yet the perversity of class hierarchy has long allowed chinless fucking idiots like George Gideon Osborne to achieve political success.  You only need to look at the braying mob of public schoolboys in Parliament to see the standards are set pretty low.  Osborne is where he is today because of his father’s money.  Join the mob at Osborne & Little and demand that they keep their odious and errant offspring under control.

I can’t make it, but would thoroughly recommend it.  Whatever happens it’s likely to be a laugh.  Last time I went to Chelsea I ended up chucked out of pub after pub, with a companion wearing a nicked ball gown and my over-sized trainers. I was barefoot.  I walked into a boutique and nicked some well posh sun glasses, only to lose them within five minutes of leaving.  The last thing I remember is standing on a post box shouting whilst my loyal friend scarpered.  This seemed somewhat unfair as she had by far been the most responsible for the pub bannings.  Acid, neat scotch and sleep deprivation can do funny things*.  But everyone was awfully nice.  You can get away with fucking anything in places like Chelsea.  Everyone assumes you’re just some errant toff slumming it.  Should your proletarian status be revealed then you will be met with a mixture of pity, disbelief and terror.  They still probably won’t call the filth unless you nick their ipad.  It’s a different world but it’s still our world.  Take the class war to Chelsea this Wednesday!

The fine animation above is from the Anarchist Media Project.

*I should point out this all happened a long time ago.

Osborne’s Pie Tax Is Yet Another Attack On The Poor

Still reeling from the news that coppers are to face annual fitness tests, Greggs Bakery have been hit again with Osborne’s Pie Tax.

Greggs are workfare using scum who deserve little sympathy.  They leech money from both their workers and customers alike.  That’s capitalism.  This move will also hit local independent bakeries, if you can still find one.  They are capitalists as well, as are your local independent health food store.  Ask the workers in there how much they get paid.  Chances are they’d be better off at Tesco.  Fuck all the bosses, large and small.

But the Pie Tax isn’t really about Greggs.  It’s about yet another assault on the working class at a time when food prices are soaring.  This comes along with a  a tax on caravans and announcements that cheap beer is to be made illegal.  And fags have gone up again.  It reveals Osborne’s utter contempt for those who weren’t born with silver spoons in their mouths.  None of these things will affect him and his chinless chums.  All are aimed squarely at working class culture and will hit the very poorest hardest.

Labour MP John Mann (who went to public school himself, albeit on a scholarship), floored Osborne when he asked him when he last had a Greggs Pasty.  The answer quite possibly is never.  He has no idea what it’s like to try and get something with some sustenance to eat for a quid.  It’s far from ideal fucking situation but the fact is that cheap high calorie food stops some people from going hungry.

Working class people aren’t fucking stupid.  No-one thinks a Greggs pasty represents a high point in human cuisine.  We’ve all seen Celebrity Masterchef.  We know what we aren’t getting.  But a lot of us have neither the time or money to head off to a Farmer’s Market on some other middle class wankfest to buy our food.  And I’d rather have a Greggs pasty than some manky old vegetables that came out of a skip anyday.

Bone’s got it right when he says: “We seem to be developing a bunch of METROPOLITAN  sneerers at Gregg’s and Wetherspoons – AND PROBABY STATICS – who’s lives are far removed from the daily reality of our class and prefer ‘poltical issues’.”

You’d think the former editor of Class War would be able to spell political, but that just sums up the point.  People mistake aesthetics for politics all the time, as if what you watch on television or where you shop is some kind of political act.  A striking trade union member eating a Big Mac on a picket line is more politically active than a hippy vegan poet  will ever be.  It’s really not about where you shop*.  The price of a Greggs pasty, a tin of beans or a can of lager is directly related to wealth grabs by the rich. A tax on cheap food is helping to cut the taxes of multi-millionaires.  Politics is about distribution and control of labour and resources.  We should fight every attempt by the rich to take even more from the people with least.  It’s time to reclaim our pies.

MAKE GIDEON OSBORNE REMEMBER HIS NEXT PASTIE – THROW IT AT HIM

*Having said that all good hippies should be boycotting Holland & Barrett.

Nothing But Fear For the Very Poorest in This Budget

The one thing that will stand out in today’s budget speech was multi-millionaire George Osborne’s pledge to cut £10 billion from the welfare budget before 2016.

Already there is a plan to cut 20% from the budget for Disability Living Allowance by introducing brutal new Atos style tests.  Around a third of people are being stripped of sickness benefits creating possibly the most vicious welfare system in the developed world.  Housing Benefit cuts mean homelessness is already soaring.  It’s difficult to conceive the devastation in people’s lives if these cuts go even further.  Job Seekers Allowance only costs around £5 billion a year, sickness benefits around £8 billion.  Both are vital unless the Government is happy watching the sick die on the streets whilst the unemployed youth ransack Tesco for dinner every night.

Pensions and Working Tax Credit make up the bulk of Welfare Spending.  It seems likely that Working Tax Credit is one benefit which will be further cut.  Already Housing Benefit cuts are forcing thousands of low paid workers into rent arrears and homelessness.  This makes a mockery of raising the income tax threshold.  They are simply giving with one hand whilst taking far more with the other.  The very poorest don’t even pay tax.  Someone working for minimum wage for 25 hours a week will not be one penny better off after this budget. More people than ever are being forced into part time work, something which masks the true employment crisis. The freeze on Minimum Wage for the young means low paid young people are facing an effective pay cut.  And the price of fags is going up.

Billionaires got their predicted tax cut.  Tens of thousands of pounds placed in the pockets of the odious rich.  Bosses are in for a bumper bonus due to Corporation Tax cuts.  Middle class parents also get a bung with the ludicrously complicated plans for Child Benefit leaving many of them better off than previously announced.  In fact unless lower and higher income tax rates are adjusted, all earners will benefit from the raising of the tax allowance.  All except the lowest paid of course, who if they earn enough to pay tax at all, will see it clawed back in benefit and tax credit cuts.

£10 billion pounds, taken from people already destitute, will pay for this give away.  This is the reverse of what Lib Dem scum claimed was a Robin Hood budget.  The liberal rich and middle classes should remember this next time they attempt to salve their consciences by chucking a homeless bloke a quid.  He helped fund your tax cuts.  Don’t that make you feel proud?

Tory Sleaze Is Back! – George Osborne in Cocaine and Kink Scandal

Former cokehead in charge of nation’s finances!

“George Osborne did take cocaine on that night. And not just on that night. He took it on a regular basis with me, with his friends.”

So has claimed Natalie Rowe, his former Dominatrix on the Australian ABC programme ‘PM’.  Osborne has yet to comment.  Sources say he merely sniffed.  His mate Andy Coulson attempted a clean up job after this story first emerged but now there’s no more News of the World to carry out the Tory Party’s dirty work.

The word is he was also paying for the services of Ms Rowe and used the name ‘Louise’ as his ‘safeword’ for when the spankings got too much.

Which is (just about) a coincidence as Tory MP Louise Mensch was also recently outed as a drug user.  She called it ‘tabloid nonsense’.  Osborne, and Cameron who’s also a former illegal drug user have always refused to deny it.  They say it is part of their private life.  Try explaining that to a magistrate.  1400 people were imprisoned last year for possession of drugs.

George Osborne is a Nonce* …

George Osborne is a nonce was the message implied by some protesters at today’s pitiful attempt to rally in favour of government cuts. Less than a hundred people turned out for the Rally Against Debt, despite the combined weight of UKIP, The Tax Payers Alliance, The Freedom Association and whole host of random right wing lunatics.

Toby Young, who had previously claimed “all those who care about Britain’s future should attend the Rally Against Debt”, didn’t turn up.

The diverse crowd of middle aged Jeremy Clarkson wannabes even included some women.  The wives of several members of the Tax Payers were not believed to be in attendance, with many using the opportunity to spend the afternoon fucking someone else instead.

Protesters wore hard hitting t-shirt bearing slogans such as ‘fuck the EU’, carried placards urging people to read capitalist heavy weights like Ayn Rand and Richard Littlejohn, whilst one even dressed up as someone from a film.  Spiffing.  Not to be outdone by the storming of Tory Headquarters by student protesters last year, a couple of Ukippers burnt an EU flag.

Despite the poor turn out organisers were pleased with the result, claiming that almost every complete cunt in the country had attended.  An organiser told us “whilst we had hoped for a slightly higher attendance, amongst complete cunts our attendance was impressive.  We believe that almost all high profile cunts, with the exception of Toby Young, are present, and it’s entirely possible that we have managed to bring together the hundred biggest cunts in the country.”

Tory party sources were quick to deny this.  The silent majority who aren’t cunts failed to show.

Then everyone went home and got laughed at on twitter.

* allegedly, claim some Rally Against Debt protesters.  Sort of.