Cuts and Fairness

Oh God, I'm sick of it. Absolutely sick of it. I'm sick to fucking death of hearing that the spending cuts implemented by the coalition are not fair. Particularly since this sort of trite bullshit tends to spew forth from those who believe that the rich paying much greater percentages in tax is the very definition of fairness.

When someone says that the spending cuts aren't fair what they mean is that they don't think that the people being affected by the cuts are the right people, and that the axe is falling in the wrong areas. However, it is next to impossible to cut spending in this country without it affecting someone - such is the intense, pernicious reach of the state after 13 years of Nu Labour misrule. So no matter what is cut, it is going to affect someone somewhere who then will claim that the cut in question is unfair. How, pray, do we then have a fair tax cut?

And you want to know why the poor are more affected by the cuts? Because the Labour government did its level fucking best to make them as dependent on the state as possible. The fact that they are now being adversely affected is arguably as much the fault of the last Labour government than it is of the ConDems, if not more so.

The cuts hurt people - but that doesn't stop them from being inevitable and, in the longer term, helpful. I don't doubt for one second that we will be a far more healthy nation once we have weaned ourselves off the teat of the state and started to realise again that we can, and should, take responsibility for ourselves.