“WHERE is the fairness,” asked George Osborne, “for the shift-worker, leaving home in the dark hours of the early morning, who looks up at the closed blinds of their next-door neighbour sleeping off a life on benefits?” With that snarling exhortation, in 2012, the Conservative chancellor of the exchequer brandished an axe at Britain’s welfare state. Yet, due to the moderating exigencies of coalition rule, he was unable to swing it to his satisfaction until July 8th—when he delivered the first true-blue budget for almost two decades. To test the chancellor’s analysis, as he was whetting his blade beforehand, Bagehot paid a visit to the Tulse Hill public housing estate, a little after dawn, searching for resentful workers, layabout scroungers and closed blinds.
He found none of the last; residents of the estate, one of the toughest in south London, are more likely to shut out the light with sheets, patched with beloved national flags, of Portugal, Nigeria, Brazil. And though there were, by 6am, a lot of these drapes still in place, the residents flowing out to the nearest bus-stop paid them no heed. They were hurrying to clean offices, guard...Continue reading
via Brian Rushton, George Osborne’s sad triumph
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