Have the House of Lords voted yet about the tax credits?

[Fantasyland]

Just wondering if my last hope of the House of Lords voting against the tax credits changes has happened yet?

I can't imagine this will make any difference. They want to get rid of tax credits, and they will - because although people can work as many hours as they can in low paid jobs, they still won't count as 'hard working strivers' because they will never get rich from it. If you need to claim anything at all to keep your family going, you're one of those scroungers they vilified before the election and you're not trying hard enough.

Yaktriangle
It's made a bit of difference because it has exposed the Tories as lying incompetents.

Public knowledge makes a difference. Before, they were in a coalition with the Lib Dems so blamed them and Labour before them, for everything.

They now only have themselves to blame.

Can anyone tell me how Cameron and co justified tax breaks for millionaires whilst cutting benefits and services everywhere else?

What was their reasoning? I know it will be bullshit but what reasons did they give? Has Cameron actually answered the question?

Why isn't someone calling them out on their bullshit and not letting them get away with it or not answering?

They spin it as "Helping the hard working" and "not tolerating scroungers" if you have noticed any press

Fantasy - They have never admitted to cutting benefits and service (and never will).

If you ask a fucking Tory they will tell you they have invested £x in services...blah blah...and that the cuts in benefits will be offset by the introduction of the Living Wage and tax reductions (they will not).

It's all bollocks as always.

I know their spin on helping the hard working but They also spin austerity and tightening our belts and we are all in this together blah blah, so someone needs to call them out repeatedly on why the rich are being helped whilst the poor are being stamped on.

If George osbournes new minimum wage & childcare help is so good it would have naturally brought people out of tax credits (which is how it should be). There should be no need for cuts.

I'm so pleased the House of Lords stepped up, finally someone's put a spanner in the works. The protests, the petitions didn't work, they didn't listen to us. But some lords and baroness's (probably the least likely to need tax credits!) did it.
Fantastic

'What was their reasoning?'

They claimed that tax benefits was subsidising employers by allowing them to keep wages low as if they will now all increase wages, which of course they won't. They know the public don't like to see employers getting away with low wages subsidised by the taxpayer and they hoped that the taxpayer would accept that logic as the taxpayer felt ripped off.

This is bad news for Osborne in my opinion because he has been wounded and Labour and the Lords have smelt blood. The Tories are politically correct modernisers who deal only in spin so I don't think they will have the nerve to create 100 Tory peers etc to reform the House of Lords because they fear looking bad to the public. So I don't think they will act and all their opponents will see their weakness and will challenge them again and again. It looks like they hoped the HOL would not challenge convention and would back down but the Lords called their bluff and now the Tories have been exposed as toothless tigers who can be defeated without real consequence.

Et tu, Boris?

I expect Boris will stick the knife in and not help the Tories out of their hole as he eyes up the leadership prize. Osborne is now on the backfoot and he may now discover who his real friends are and they may not be as numerous as he thought as the jockeying for power begins as Cameron's reign begins to collapse.

Fantasy

It's what conservative governments do and have always done.
They make the rich richer and the poor poorer.
But new generations don't remember what happened with previous conservative governments and think they'll be ok.
They are there to serve the rich.

I don't think its just the case of new generations not remembering, I think its people believing a politician cannot be totally and utterly as dishonest as Cameron has been, one one hand saying we wont cut tax credits then when in government going ahead and cutting them...I think if you're an honest person, which most people are, you just don't believe anyone would actually do this, not even the flea ridden tories.

but there you are, you'd be wrong.

Dishonesty has been a common denominator among prime ministers over the last 35 years. Gordon Brown was hopeless at it and got crucified. Anyone who trusts a polished politician is falling for spin.
Cameron said he didn't want to cut WTC. He would probably still say that. But obviously he's been told it's necessary and much against his will he has to do it... It was all spin and it was so carefully phrased. He knew that it would happen in April.

I don't in principle believe that if you are working you should need government funding to subsidise a mean employer

And that employer can be the government.

Most politicians are bloody liars though aren't they?

How the hell have we actually got to the point where people who burned £50 notes in front of homeless people are running the country?

I guess maybe it is unfair of me to be cross with people who voted for them if they were misguided. But I think it's very obvious what they stand for and I've never voted for them even once in my whole voting life.

I would never have and never will vote Tory either. But this situation we are in robbing the people to bail out the financial sector "Austerity" is a powerful tool.

Everytime I hear an ordinary voting person of seeming common sense say a Tory line like "We can't keep living beyond our means" or "Well, people who work hard just don't need benefits" or "I don't like this lazy benefits culture promoted by Labour" I die a bit inside!
I hear comments like this all the time (and on Facebook etc). I know the Tory line has worked because it's easier to kick people below you, poorer people, disadvantaged people, than it is to demand fair play out of theiving con artists who run the country.

It's all lies. You can "balance the books" "reduce thd defecit" etc without attacking the vulnerable. The Tories will never look at it this way though because poor bashing is their Forte.

The Sun paper and TV entertainment gets everyone poor bashing too. It's become a cultural sport.

squidzin

Squidzin - yes, you are absolutely right.

Typical Tory view, Taking from the rich = stealing. Taking from the poor = capitalism.

Very thankful for the HoL right now. My DH works full time, long shifts over a seven day week. We both worked up until Ds1 was diagnosed with ASD. I'm now his career. We didn't plan for autism. Disability, redundancy, changes in circumstances can happen to us all. We stood to lose 2500 a year. £50 a week. Most of our food budget.

I slept a little easier last night.

Squidsin - spot On!

Carer*

'Spot on', what absolute one-sided rollocks, and that there was any alternative put forward by those that had the books for 13-years.

Tell me that I'm wrong, that 7-years after the financial crash and great recession that followed it, NO ONE ELSE has come out with costed plans to solve the unbalanced shitstack of an unbalanced mess that Labour put together - where the increased size of the State, benefits, welfare, Tax Credits put together on their watch only funded by a financial boom/government debt - so was always going to fall apart at the first recession.

www.telegraph.co.uk/news/politics/10574376/Graphic-Britain-outstrips-Europe-on-welfare-spending.html

We GOT the recession; by May 2010 the UK had a £153 billion government overspend – the largest in Europe and well over twice that of socialist France – with NO costed plans in place to sort it then, or since.

With socialism trying to balance the books, all you get are extra taxes to the masses as proved below, as the ideology always assumes they can TAX an economy to growth - as evidenced by the following, at a time real wages had been falling SINCE 2008.

March 2010; “Labour’s plans to increase national insurance next year will cost jobs, Alistair Darling has said.”
www.telegraph.co.uk/news/politics/labour/7539343/Labours-planned-National-Insurance-increase-will-cost-jobs-Alistair-Darling-admits.html

“In his evidence, Mr Darling defended his plans to increase national insurance, saying it was necessary to raise extra money to reduce Government borrowing, which will be £167 billion this year.”

So if anyone thinks they’d be better off under Labour, even those on benefits, think again, as even if they went back on their pre election promises to cut the welfare/benefits/tax credit monster they created (see below), a country cannot sustain the unsustainable no matter what socialist governments promise, just ask Greece.

www.theguardian.com/politics/2013/aug/21/labour-to-cut-benefits-bill-2015

www.theguardian.com/politics/2013/oct/12/labour-benefits-tories-labour-rachel-reeves-welfare

Squidzin .... so tell me what facts you disagree with in my post i.e. were real earnings falling from 2008 without help for the masses, were there any detailed/fully costed plans to sort out their own mess, for the past 35-years Labour have been the party of higher taxes for all (below was just the first 7-years) - so HOW would people have been better off under any alternative under socialism on the road to Greece - that NEVER gives the details BEFORE an election, even a £££ new taxes figure?

www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-389284/The-80-tax-rises-Labour.html

Cameron has lied from the beginning. He said that austerity would allow funds to be directed to those most in need. The 'worthy' needy - such as the most severely disabled. Well I have a severely disabled child & it's all bollocks. He has been far more affected by the cuts than my non-disabled children.

I'm pleased people are finally beginning to wake up to what a nasty nasty bunch this lot are.

For a start, Cameron would not have called cutting a £153 billion annual government overspend in 2010, that the Conservatives budgeted to BALANCE in 2001/2 (as it did), 'austerity'.

If there were easy choices, those that built up that one-sided economic, financial and social disaster, would have told you the £££ figures on the alternative, which could only have meant far more national debt and taxes for all, now, and for our children's children to finally sort out with what is being done NOW.

Bust countries without the possibility of job creation never work for the poor, as even the bailed out have to make huge cuts i.e. double digit NHS type service cuts in Spain, Portugal and Greece.

Labour left a mess in 1979 and 2010 and have not left the country in a better state than when they found it since the 1930's, so if 'nasty' means taking the decisions those that fecked up refuse to, then so be it.

I think its pretty nasty to hand out tax breaks to the mega rich whilst slashing services to the most severely disabled. Not sure what else you would call it. And anyway he lied. He said those with the most severe disabilities would be protected. In fact they have paid a higher price than anyone (being disabled left you shafted, being disabled and reliant on social care left you utterly shafted and then some).

There are plenty of economists who argue about whether or not cuts were needed to the degree they have been imposed and whether they actually work (seem to be slowing the economy). Many seem to recognise that what we're in now is ideology, not some sort of careful budgeting.