The needy and the greedy

Defying mounting criticism from almost all sides, David Cameron has made it clear again in the last few days that fiscal austerity still overrides all other goals in his mind.   The Treasury has asked spending ministries to identify possible targets for a further round of spending cuts in order to keep the deficit reduction programme on track.  

Inevitably, the axe will fall heavily on social programmes -- unemployment benefits, welfare, pensions and the like.  That's partly because those programmes account for such a large proportion of government spending, but it's also because Tories instinctively feel that a large proportion of spending on such things is wasted.  But where are the cuts likely to fall?  Despite the fiasco over the so-called "Granny Tax" in the recent budget, the pampered elderly (including yours truly) are likely to be largely exempt, mainly because we turn up at the polling stations in awkwardly large numbers at election time.  So I, along with such impoverished souls as Sir Richard Branson,  Sir Mick Jagger and Dame Helen Mirren, will continue to enjoy free bus travel, free prescription meds and the ludicrous "winter fuel allowance",  without any attempt being made to check whether we actually need the money.    

This morning on BBC Radio 5 Live,  a call-in show offered a reminder of just how pervasive the sense of entitlement is.  The subject du jour was a new think-tank report calling for more affordable child care.  One of the callers was a gent who felt he wasn't getting nearly enough public help (read: money) to look after his three kids.  It emerged that both he and his wife are top rate taxpayers, which implies that the family is comfortably in the top 10% of UK households in terms of income.  The host, Victoria Derbyshire,  who has kids of her own, and may also be a top-rate taxpayer, asked him "Why do you think you deserve more help?"  To this he replied, "Well, I'm doing a lot for my children", prompting Victoria Derbyshire to blurt out "You're supposed to do that, you're their Dad!".  You'd hope she spoke on behalf of a lot of the audience there, but to be honest,  you wouldn't be sure of it.

So it goes.  The elderly are largely untouchable, and the aggrieved middle classes are quick to take to the airwaves to demand more for themselves.  That leaves the poor and disadvantaged to bear the brunt of the cuts, which is how we find ourselves with a newspaper story of the London borough of Newham, home of the Olympics, looking to ship its social housing tenants to Stoke-on-Trent because it can't afford to house them, side-by-side with a story that private landlords in the same borough are evicting long-standing tenants with a view to charging Olympics visitors up to £10,000 a week for accommodation during the Games.