As the Tories announce another £18bn in spending cuts, I look at their continuing war on everyone except the super-rich, and how this doesn’t just hurt the poorest.

Transcript:

Well, I can’t really tell you how angry I am right now. Today we’ve had the news that the Chancellor has rolled back his 45p income tax band scrapping. That’s not a victory. I mean, it’s a sort of victory, but in the overall scheme of what’s happening it almost doesn’t matter. The costs to the country of bailing out the markets and buying government bonds and stuff after the disastrous mini budget the other day is 65 billion pounds, 65 billion pounds that obviously we are all going to pay for in one way or another.

And that’s ignoring the upcoming cost of living crisis, or in fact ongoing. But it’s going to get worse. Well, what’s really infuriated me today is that they’ve just announced 18 billion in public sector cuts. Now these are real terms cuts because what they’re doing is basically not changing any funding based on the massively higher than expected rate of inflation.

So what that means is hospitals and schools and all these other things we all need - not just that, but every public service. Everything that the government does for us and for anyone else, it’s all going to have the same money that it would’ve got if inflation stuck at a rational sort of sensible amount, which wasn’t enough in the first place as anyone who has to wait 10 hours for an ambulance can tell you, or anyone who has to wait weeks to see a GP or anything, any kind of public service and even just dealing with, getting your driving license or your passport or anything else. All of these things are public services. They don’t just affect the poor. We’re not talking about benefits here. Not that attacking benefits is a good thing in any way, but these affect everyone, rich or poor.

Public services are vital for everyone. Now, of course, if you are very, very rich, you can get your way around them. With private healthcare or private schooling or whatever, but they’ll affect everyone else. And 18 billion so far has a cut. So what’s that mean? That means that schools that can’t really afford to get TAs or extra teachers or refurbished leaking classrooms will have even less money to do those things.

The obvious conclusion to that is that they’re going to have to sack people, hospitals who can’t afford to get bank staff into do operations or run clinics. What are they going to do? The obvious answer is they’re going to treat fewer people but they’re going to have to get that money somehow.

This isn’t money that is spare. This is money that’s not there right now. Public services have been crumbling for 10 years and this isn’t just rhetoric. I mean, we’ve gone from, as I’ve said in a previous recording, we’ve gone from a point in 2010 where the NHS was reaching the lowest waiting times in its history.

Satisfaction was all time high. People forget that was just before the Tories got. What’s changed since then? Yes, it’s been coronavirus, but not till 10 years after the toys got in and the services have been degrading all that time. And what’s going to happen now, Now they’ve got even less money. This is a massive real terms cut and there’s no plans to change that a government’s so insistent on doubling down.

It’s a gender for just transferring wealth from all of us. To the super rich. It’s not going to change. It changed the 45 P tax rate because even the people who benefited from that cut actually said it’s ridiculous. So yeah, that was a relatively cost free, although made them look ridiculous. Cost free thing for the toys to do.

But this, this, don’t ever think this is anything except the war against ordinary people. Not just the poor, ordinary people, poor middle class, , people who might consider that. They’ve done quite. We’re all going to pay and all of this money is going to go to the super rich it’s gotta end because this is literally going to kill people. People not going to hospital or their doctors in time. It’s already killing people. It’s going get worse. People who don’t get the care they need, when they have issues, psychological issues or mental health issues, is going to get worse.

Schools are going to get worse. There’ll be larger class sizes. There even fewer teachers. It’s just going to be an absolute nightmare. And as sooner these disaster capitalists are booted out, the better.