Osborne's Budget A Damning Indictment Of The State Of British Politics

This week marked the first solo Conservative Government Budget since 1996, with George Osborne unveiling a myriad of plans on how he and his fellow Conservative politicians feel is the best way to keep the United Kingdom on the path to recovery. These plans include cutting corporation tax, restricting mortgage relief for buy-to-let landlords, a new 'living wage', and increasing the personal allowance. There are too many to discuss each one individually, so I’ll stick to the ones that struck me most, which were the many proposals at the cost of the younger generation; those hoping to go into either further education, the workforce, or the housing market. The first of these, and perhaps the most important one, is the replacement of the maintenance grant, with a further, albeit larger, maintenance loan. The grant is aimed at the poorest students hoping to go to university, helping to pay for accommodation, food, textbooks amongst other things. Most students on a three year degree course will be leaving university with a debt of around £40,000. To increase this amount any further, particularly to those from the poorest backgrounds, could act as a serious deterrent, and one which somebody shouldn't be faced with when choosing whether to further their education. What compounds this even more is the fact that it hasn't been five years since tuition fees tripled, as well as the fact that many of the politicians currently sitting in government not only didn't have to pay any tuition fees whatsoever to go to university, but also received significant grants, ones which they are now taking away from those who need them most. The introduction of the new 'living wage' of £7.20, rising to £9 by 2020, does seem like it should benefit those newly entering the workforce, starting them on a decent salary. However, look a little deeper and you find that it is only for workers over the age of 25. Why should a 23 old doing the exact same job, perhaps even a more important job in the same workplace as a 26 year old, be paid less, based purely on their age? This is just plain and simple inequality. Housing benefits are also going to be restricted for 18-21-year-olds, who will now have to go through an 'earn-to-learn' obligation. Once again, why should people over that age who are entering the house market not have to go through this? It has never been as difficult to enter the housing market as it has been following the recent economic crisis. The percentage of mortgage borrowers under 25 has dropped from 20% in 1990, to just a little over 5% in 2012, and average house prices for first time buyers have risen around 200% since the 1970s, much higher than the rate of income has increased for first time buyers.* Older generations never had to face the struggle in the housing market as the young people of today have to, and will continue to have to, and if they did face a struggle, it certainly wasn’t to the same universal extent. Despite it seeming obvious that the government is trying to cut its spending and increase its tax revenue, another part of the Budget is that inheritance tax will not have to be paid on properties valued up to £1m, up from £650,000. At a time when, whether rightly or wrongly, welfare cuts are being imposed strongly, it doesn't make sense to me to allow those who are better off than the majority of the country (they have a property worth over £650,000) should now be able to pass on more of this wealth to their children, who may have also benefited from going through the education system without exiting with a vast quantity of debt. Coupled with the removal of grants for poorer students, what this shows to me is a government that doesn't seem to care about wealth inequality in this country. We already have one of the worst rates of wealth inequality not only in Europe, but throughout the developed world, and what this Budget has shown to me is a government that doesn't seem to care about even improving it slightly, but is quite happy for it to increase and get worse. Another, more minor point from the Budget was the announcement that the BBC would now pay for the TV licenses of those aged 75 or above, replacing the government in doing this. Normally, at a time of relative austerity, this would seem an acceptable proposal. However, just last year the BBC announced that it would be closing down BBC3, and that it would become an online only channel, as the BBC was having to make significant cuts itself. Although this cancellation has been postponed, it again seems odd that while being able to fund the TV licenses for the elderly, it is having to shut down the channel it created for the younger generations. Whether the channel wasn't making enough revenue for them, neither is shelling out £650m to the government to subsidise TV licenses. After the election, I was optimistic to see what the government could bring, and wanted patience rather than the unnecessary outrage that followed the result. But this Budget has exaggerated a problem that I felt was abundantly clear during the build-up to the election. There was almost nothing targeted at the young voters, very little on offer from the parties to try and gain votes from the younger demographics, and now it seems clear. The young can be victimised and punished for the mistakes made, not by them and their generation, but by the generations before them, who were responsible for the crisis, and are now happy to remove the benefits that helped them get to where they are today.

http://www.buzzfeed.com/tomchivers/the-hard-smack-of-fiscal-discipline#.gklg1wyRJ