George Osborne threatens to put up taxes and cut the NHS as punishment for leaving the EU

George Osborne has threatened a punishment budget for leaving the EU if he is still Chancellor after next week.

He has threatened to:

• Put up income tax by 2p (or 3p on the higher rate)
• Put up inheritance tax by 5%
• Put up fuel duty by 5p
• Put up alcohol duty by 5p
• Cut £2.5bn from the NHS budget
• Cut £1.2bn from the defence budget
• Cut £1.15bn from the education budget
• Cut £2bn from the pensions budget
• Cut the transport budget by 5%
• Cut the police budget by 5%

The foreign aid budget would be protected under his punishment budget.

George Osborne might have survived the referendum if he kept his head down but this will be the final nail in the coffin of his inglorious career.

George Osborne's maths is as bad as his economics

George Osborne announced earlier in the week that leaving the EU will cost every household £4,300 per year.

Economists laughed at him and even the BBC briefly published an article explaining why his dodgy dossier was dodgy before "fixing it" to get it back on message. But just how dodgy is Gideon's dodgy dossier?

The "model" that was used to come up with the £4,300 per year cost of leaving the EU makes some assumptions. It assumes that we will end up with the same trade deal with the EU as Canada. Why Canada? No idea but it was probably chosen for its unsuitability to the UK's relationship with the EU but the main reason is probably that the Canadian free trade agreement has yet to come into force for the EU so the figures they use are conveniently unverifiable guesswork. The model also assumes that there will be slow economic growth and that the British government - specifically George Osborne's department - will impose tariffs on EU imports.

Assuming these worst case scenarios - economic depression and deliberate economic suicide by the Treasury - come to bear at the same time and we have the same trade deal as Canada and Canada's trade deal turns out to be rubbish then the model says GDP will be reduced by £36bn a year by 2030.

So how has the Chancellor got from a £36bn in GDP - the value of the economic activity of people and businesses in the UK - to Brexit resulting in a reduction in household income of £4,300 per year? The answer is that he hasn't. Or rather, he has made a link between the two but it's nonsense.

The £36bn reduction in GDP in 2030 has been divided by the estimated number of households in the UK in 2013 from statistics provided by the Office of National Statistics. This is the Office of National Statistics that tells us that 257,000 EU immigrants came to live here last year whilst HMRC issued 630,000 National Insurance numbers to EU immigrants in the same period. So if you divide this hypothetical £36bn by what the ONS guessed were the number of households in the UK three years ago (rather than the projected number of households in 2030) then you arrive at a figure of around £4,300. But actually, you don't because even the maths is wrong. There are approximately 26.7m households in the UK and ¹/_2,600,000th of £36bn is £13,483 so where has the £4,300 come from?

Claiming that every household would be £13,483 per year worse off by leaving the EU would convince absolutely nobody bu £4,300 per year? That's kind of believable if you didn't know better and were in the habit of believing economically illiterate politicians. But it gets better. If GDP was directly linked to household income as George's dodgy dossier suggests then the average household income of the UK would be £719,101 per year!

Imagine you get a knock at the door from a gas and electricity supplier who tells you they're going to save you money. They then proceed to tell you that based on your next door neighbour's tariff, your monthly phone bill and the amount of electricity your mum and dad used when you were 12, your current supplier will be overcharging you for your gas by £10,000 per year in 14 years' time would you give sign on the dotted line? Or would you laugh in their face and get back to Coronation Street?

Osborne's claims aren't even thinly disguised dishonesty, they are blatant fearmongering nonsense. The numbers don't add up, he's comparing apples with oranges and making assumptions based on dodgy statistics and guesswork to come up with an outrageous but just about believable headline for the papers.

Pathetic Chancellor begs EU for permission to lift tampon tax

George Osborne is hoping to avoid a budget revolt over EU tax rises from his own MPs, telling them that he's sure the EU is only days away from giving him permission to abolish VAT on sanitary products.

The so-called "tampon tax" has been imposed by the EU who decided that zero-rating sanitary products was illegal and ordered VAT to be applied at the standard rate which, in the UK, is 20%. MPs have been up in arms since the EU ruling and a cross party campaign has been formed in opposition to the tampon tax.

The sight of the British Chancellor telling MPs that he thinks he's on the verge of getting permission from the EU to abolish tax on tampons is quite pathetic. The only way out of this madness is to vote to leave on 23rd June.

Lords delay tax credit cuts, Osborne and Cameron want to use it as an excuse to remove opposition

The House of Lords have voted for amendments to George Osborne's proposed £4bn cuts to tax credits which will delay their implementation whilst the impact of the cuts is independently assessed.

David Cameron and George Osborne both say that the unelected House of Lords defying the elected House of Commons is a constitutional anomaly that needs addressing and are calling for a "rapid review" on the constitution of the House of Lords.

This so-called constitutional anomaly was addressed in 1911 with the passing of the Parliament Act which allows the House of Commons to overrule the House of Lords if they reject a Bill three times. It was introduced after Lloyd George's budget was blocked by the Lords despite there being a convention that money bills go through on the nod.

To say that this is the first time in a 100 years that the Lords have defied the government - as Osborne and co are saying - is incorrect. The Parliament Act has been used to overrule the Lords seven times since 1911, the most recent occasion being the passing of the Hunting Act in 2004.

Tax credit cuts weren't a manifesto pledge - something that the Lords don't oppose by convention because it is considered that the electorate have given their approval to the bill in the ballot box. In fact the Tories promised not to cut tax credits so the Lords haven't broken any convention and have, in fact, done exactly what they are there to do which is to scrutinise proposed legislation and if they think it's wrong, to either fix it or throw it out.

It was most amusing to hear George Osborne complaining about "unelected Labour and Liberal Lords" defying the elected House of Commons. Giving the Lib Dems another 11 peers this year despite them being wiped out at the ballot box isn't looking so clever now is it George?

Cameron and Osborne quietly pay £1.7bn bill they refused to pay last year

The Treasury have quietly paid the £1.7bn the EU demanded last October after recalculating our membership fees from 1995 to take into account the economic output of the black market, including drug dealers and prostitutes.

When the EU hit the Treasury with the bill last year both David Cameron and George Osborne refused to pay it. Cameron described it as "completely unacceptable" and he wouldn't pay it whilst George Osborne said he would get "a better deal".

Instead, they paid half of what was being demanded in July and the other half in September after doing a deal to delay the embarrassing payment until after the election. In total, £2.87bn was paid and the EU will hand back a £1.24bn rebate at some point in the future assuming they don't decide to confiscate as punishment for not signing up to the redistribution of refugees and illegal immigrants.

Osborne claims victory by caving in to EU demands

George Osborne has declared victory over his and David Cameron's demands that the European Financial Stability Mechanism (EFSM) mustn't be used to bail out Greece by agreeing to the EFSM being used to bail out Greece.

Osborne says that it's ok to use the EFSM to bail out Greece because the EU have agreed that although we've got to guarantee the loans to Greece we won't have to pay out when they default because the loans are backed up by Greek bonds. Which Greece would default on if they defaulted on these loans.

You can't make this stuff up!

Osborne declares victory over paying EU's £1.7bn bill

Only last week David Cameron was refusing to pay the "outrageous" £1.7bn bill the EU is demanding. This week George Osbourne was saying that we're going to pay but we're not going to pay it all. Yesterday he declared victory by paying the full amount.

The EU was demanding a £1.7bn payment to cover the extra amount we would have paid in membership fees since 1995 if they'd included prostitution and drug dealing in their calculations of the size of the UK economy like they are now. George Osborne has brought forward £1bn of next year's rebate to take £850m off the £1.7bn bill so it's still costing us £1.7bn.

While the Tories have been trying to spin this as a victory, the EU have said that this was the amount we were supposed to be paying and Osborne has achieved nothing. If they think we're going to be taken in by some dodgy maths, the Tories must think we're as stupid as they are!

Losing AAA rating will cost us dearly

Credit reference agency, Moody, has downgraded the UK's AAA credit rating citing poor growth and a negative outlook on the UK's economy.

We can still afford to pay for
India's space programme can't we?

George Osborne says it doesn't really matter and Ed Balls says that the Tories should start spending even more money.  They're both wrong.

Balls is wrong because we're still spending too much.  "The cuts" aren't cuts in spending, they're decreases in the increases in spending.  The British government is still spending more money than we're paying in taxes and it's just not sustainable.

Osborne is wrong for the same reason.  We're borrowing money at an alarming rate and the cost of borrowing that money will go up as our credit rating goes down.  We're not in Greece or Spain's league where they're having to turn to the equivalent of payday loan companies but even the 0.16% increase in borrowing costs that we saw yesterday are cause for worry when our national debt is anticipated to grow by £120bn (to 98% of GDP) this year alone.  That 0.16% increase would cost us an extra £192m for this year assuming it doesn't go up in the meantime (and I would expect it to after the bad news budget in April).

Both Labour and the Conservatives are utterly useless when it comes to the economy because they're completely wedded to debt.  They know that simply borrowing more money to give it all away isn't going to fix a broken economy but they don't have the vision or the balls to do what is needed - slash taxes, slash public spending and get people working again.

Osborne offers £10bn to bail out €uro again

George Osbourne has said that he is willing to hand over £10bn more of our money, extorted from us on pain of imprisonment, to give to the IMF so it can bail out the €uro.

Unemployment is through the roof, companies are going under at a rate of knots, services are being cut to save money and the Chancellor thinks that a good use of our hard earned money is to give it to the IMF money laundering operation to prop up the failing €uro.

And this is from a Tory government that fought the last election claiming it was eurosceptic.

We're broke but still spending £73m a day on EU and international aid

The Chancellor of the Exchequer, George Osborne, has given a stark warning that the UK has run out of money and they will not fund any more tax cuts or spending increases with borrowing.

This is clearly a sop to the credit reference agencies who have threatened us with a downgrade.  It also sets expectations low so when he finds a few million down the back of the sofa to pay for something nice everyone will be impressed by his financial genius and perhaps the big bad Tories aren't so bad after all.  Or so the theory goes.

Meanwhile, the economic mastermind that is George Osborne is still handing over £50m a day to the EU and £23m a day in international aid to, amongst others, Argentina.


The answer to our economic problems does not lie within the EU.  We can't afford the £50m a day membership fee or the extra £30m or so a day in extra costs related to membership.  We can't afford the guilt by association that comes with membership of the EU damaging our economy.  We can't afford to subsidise the crooks behind the global warming scam or the scam itself.  We can't afford to keep imposing high taxes on people and businesses that stifle economic growth and increase reliance on the welfare state.

Cameron and Osbourne in favour of single economic government

George Osbourne and Cast Iron Dave have both publicly stated their belief that the EU should move towards greater economic integration to protect the euro and that a single eurozone economy is in our national interest.

I think we have to accept that greater eurozone integration is necessary to make the single currency work and that is very much in our national interest
- George Osbourne

[The eurozone will have to move] towards much more single economic government
- David Cameron

The single currency can't work when it is the currency for many different economies that are linked by only a common unit and interest rate. The German government controls the German economy, the French government controls the French economy, the Greek government ... well, technically the Greek government controls the Greek economy but in reality they're administering it to a set of rules drawn up by the EU Central Bank.

How do you ensure those economies are being run in a way that is compatible with each others' economic policies and objectives and working to a common goal? The simple answer is that you can't unless you have a single economic area with a common treasury and finance minister and control of that single economy - including taxation - sitting with that finance minister.

The problem is, what's good for Germany and France isn't good for Italy and Greece and vice versa. The German economy is too strong but as the biggest economy in the EU (and the one contributing most to the bailout funds) they have to protect it. If Germany pulled out of the euro it would become worthless. That means interest rates are kept at a level that suits Germany but which damages weaker economies like Greece and Portugal.

To level the economies of every member of the eurozone would require massive capital investment - we're talking more money that the EU has got, probably more money than there is in the world. The only option to level the eurozone economies is to drag down the strong economies which isn't an option - no government (apart from the British government, possibly) is going to deliberately sabotage their economy to protect the euro. In short, the euro is doomed to failure. The recession has shown how weak the euro is as a concept, not just as a currency.

It is incredibly naive to think that tighter economic integration and the ultimate aim of a single economic area under EU central control will exclude non-members of the eurozone.  The UK will be required to integrate with the eurozone to a certain extent and through the traditional gold-plating of EU legislation, the UK will become even tighter integrated than the EU requires.

The only safe position to take on the euro and tighter economic integration with the EU is to be well away from it.  Well away from the euro, well away from the financially illiterate eurocrats, well away from the bankrupt eurozone countries and well away from the EU.

Conservative Party membership slumps

Party documents show 40,000 supporters have left since David Cameron took over as leader three years ago.The slump has ACCELERATED over the past year with the constituencies of Shadow Cabinet members among the worst hit.

Shadow Chancellor George Osborne has lost an incredible 240 members in the last three years. Osborne—rocked by the Yachtgate scandal over his alleged talks with a Russian billionaire about a possible party donation—lost 69 constituency members in the past year.

Also badly affected is Shadow Foreign Secretary William Hague, whose constituency membership fell by 267 in just one year.Overall, Tory Party membership has fallen from 290,000 to 250,000 in the three years since Cameron took over.

The ageing membership is dying off and the party is failing to attract youngsters.
Yet Labour has managed to stabilise its membership decline. When Tony Blair won the 1997 election the total number of members stood at 405,000.

In the decade after that victory, membership halved, returning to the level it was before Blair took over.However, since Gordon Brown became PM last July the decline has halted and Labour has managed to entice 10,000 new members. Read the full story here