Britain has become a land of broken promises

Johann Hari writes:

The year 2010 began with David Cameron looking into a TV camera and pledging to the British people: “If any cabinet minister comes to me and says ‘Here are my plans’ and they involve frontline reductions, they’ll be sent straight back to their department to go away and think again.” The year ended with him pushing through the most severe cuts to frontline services in living memory.

It is now clear that David Cameron systematically lied to the electorate. He said it was “sick” and “frankly disgusting” to say he would end the NHS guarantee for cancer patients to be seen within two weeks – and then scrapped NHS guarantees, so that the number of patients waiting months before their cancer is detected has doubled. He said hospitals were “my No 1 priority” to be “totally protected” – and then slashed 20 per cent from the budget of specialist hospitals across the country. He said he would “protect the poor” from cuts – and then slashed the income of each poor family by £1,000 and began forcing hundreds of thousands from their homes.

He said he would make affordable childcare his “top priority” – and then slashed the childcare tax credit by 70 per cent. He said he “absolutely” supported the Educational Maintenance Allowance that gives £30 a week to the poorest kids to stay on at school – and then abolished it. He said he would lead “the greenest government ever” – and then began selling off our national forests and introducing deep-water drilling off our coasts. Each time, he promised he would not introduce whiplash austerity before the election – and then did it the moment he seized power.

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3 thoughts on “Britain has become a land of broken promises

  1. Vince J.

    The Brithish are like the Americans or Israelis… don’t believe as word they say!

    Just as an example, check on Youtube, Condolezza Rice (A War Crminal) veemently denying that the USA tortures. That when she was heading meetings on the Official US Torture Program in the WH with other senior officials who also LIED in public.

    Thank you Wikileaks and B. Manning for let us know what king of scum we have in Washington, in London and elsewhere!

  2. Observer

    The British and other European elites have always ruled with the least possible interest in ‘trickle down’ wealth to the vulgar masses. Sure, when they were ‘on top of the world’ financially, from the 50’s — early 70’s, and still felt the warm glow of their colonial and emprie days behind them, they could allow a little sunshine to the lesser masses beneath them : Europe was indeed, not a bad place to be for some sections of ‘the masses’ between the 50’s — early 70’s, and even in the cut throat Thatcher-ite 80’s, the more devious and materialistically minded British ‘masses’ could cut a slice of the pie for their greedy selves…

    But that is all gone now — the ‘post empire glow’ that slowly dissolved by the mid 60’s has now changed to an icy and angry chill, as UK/France et al, still hang around these ex colonies as cunning exploiter gangs and sidekick lackey enablers to the USA ( another soon to fade paunchy, over weight,vulgar bully on the world stage ).

    And the hatred increases, since many of the ex colonial ‘native’ servants are now resentful immigrants within the European states that once expolited theirr lands, and live withing states that now wage war in their lands as devious servants of America’s bankrupt empire.

    No — the European leaders, Cameron, Blair, Sarkosi, Berlusconi and all the other criminals, know very well their country’s wealth is on the way out , and they know the economic future belongs to China, South Korea, India etc — and they are now pulling up the drawbridge, stashing away as much of the wealth as possible for their own devious class, and preparing to make the peasants feel the pain and hurt of the poverty as they enjoy what they have, and squirrel away what is left of their countries’ wealth for their own gentry class for the long haul….

    Well, you do know what the plebians did in ancient Rome when the rulers did that : read your Tacitus.

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