A tweet by the well-known left-wing activist known as @rachael_swindon attacking the government’s twisted spending priorities went viral enough for the independent fact-checking organisation FullFact to check its claims.
It passed with flying colours:
Even the categories judged as ‘almost’ correct were, in fact, almost on the (literal) money, with one of them in fact slightly under-estimating the government’s spending.
By contrast, the government’s estimate for the amount saved by its financial cruelty to disabled people occupies such a wide range – £30m to £450m – as to be essentially meaningless.
But there’s always money in the treasury for a royal ‘do’ or a vanity project, of course. And in spite of all this, the mainstream media persist in challenging the basis of Labour’s fully-costed spending plans and giving the Tories’ uncosted, vague promises a free pass.
Go figure.
The SKWAWKBOX needs your support. This blog is provided free of charge but depends on the generosity of its readers to be viable. If you can afford to, please click here to arrange a one-off or modest monthly donation via PayPal. Thanks for your solidarity so this blog can keep bringing you information the Establishment would prefer you not to know about.
If you wish to reblog this post for non-commercial use, you are welcome to do so – see here for more.
I love Rachael Swindon 🙂
She’s a star.
Of course there is always money for the Royals, tax breaks for the wealthiest, private corporations and wars… the UK government has its own bank and currency and can ‘print’ it’s own money. The financial system is set up in favour of the ‘ruling classes’ not the economy, people and society as a whole…
Tax does not fund government public spending, government borrowing does. It really is time LP pushed this home instead of playing along with the tax to fund government spending line. The government, which has its own bank/money, is not at all like a household as neoliberal Thatcher preached.
Anne Pettifor. https://braveneweurope.com/ann-pettifor-on-theresa-may-danny-devito-and-other-peoples-money
“The key point is that financing for investment (via borrowing) comes first, and taxation later. Taxation – “your money” – as we all know from our own experience, is a consequence of public or private investment in employment or of other forms of activity”.
Steve Keen in a 5 min Renegade Short video explaining the fallacy behind the ‘government is like a household’ narrative aka government must run a surplus not a deficit.
Great links – as always – thanks M
I’d go the whole MMT hog and say ‘borrowing’ is also unnecessary. It is basically corporate welfare. Govt can just do Overt Monetary Finance to fund investment, pensions etc and provided the spending matches the resources (such as un and underemployed persons), it will not be inflationary. Tackling unemployment needs a Job Guarantee for all who want or need a job.
syzygysue,
I just came across this blog post from Bill Mitchell an Australian MMTer about a meeting he had with McDonnell.
http://bilbo.economicoutlook.net/blog/?p=40562
Looks like there may be a way to go on LP and MMT!
Forgot to say a massive well done Rachel Swindon for all your tremendous hard work.
Rachel is fantastic! And a great bonus from this is represented in these excellent responses above.
We must follow the lead of people such as Ann Pettifor and Richard Murphy of the Tax Research blog and tell people about how the economy really works.
Remember: it’s “Spend and tax”, never “Tax and spend”.
Rachel Swindon is a great example of how the people can bypass mainstream media propaganda.
And a great reminder of why, if and when our lords and masters attempt to shut us up or shut us down, we must immediately un-bury our clogs and our pitchforks and MARCH.
Rmember when some toerag made up tales about how Rachel was supposedly a man? And how they tried to make out that donations to her twitter/blog was ‘income’?
It hasn’t escaped anyone’s attention how Rachel, Skwawkbox et al who rely on donations just to kept their endeavours going, are regarded as ‘fake news’ by MSM outlets – despite being proved otherwise.
We haven’t forgotten how murdoch’s s*n tried to claim Skwawkbox was taking dough from the NHS as a private contractor (Or some such bollox) and had to retract it.
Both Rachel AND Steve have NO financial incentive to spout bullshit. (And wouldn’t even if they had) Therefore, there’s NO bullshit spouted from either.
For some (not so) weird reason, that refuses to compute with the press and the taxpayer-funded bbc…
God bless you both, and thanks for putting the truth out there!
Can Rachel be on the Labour NEC please?
Nice thought Jack, and I’m sure Rachael would do a brilliant job of it – but who’d be as good at ripping the piss out of the Tories? 😈