Tough for some...

It was the Tory Chancellor who said we're all in this together, the UK faces VAT rises from 17.5 per cent to 20 per cent on January 4, along with a battery of rises to fuel duty, insurance premium tax and a bank levy. Spring could mark the moment of maximum industrial and economic dislocation for the Coalition. The trade unions are targeting the period between Easter (which falls late this year, on April 24) and the wedding of Prince William and Kate Middleton on April 29 for industrial action. Street violence can be expected – April being the month when welfare cuts start to bite and public sector pay is frozen. Sure Start maternity grants will be restricted to the first child, child benefit frozen, local housing allowance rates capped, the enterprise finance guarantee (which provides emergency finance to small businesses) will be scrapped. The threshold at which tax credit withdrawal rates operate will be slashed. Put these together with the tax rises introduced in January, and many families will be facing massive cuts We're all going to be hit in our pockets, so you'd expect that politicians might be a bit circumspect about flashing the cash... Actually, what the hell am I going on about, these are politicians and those who read my blog know that I have a very low opinion of politicians, probably as low as your own, though in certain cases possibly not as I'm fairly non violent, though the rage is growing over their antics, still I wouldn't weep if others were to hang a few from lampposts pour encourager les autres.

Daily Mail.

Senior MPs were accused of ‘highly insensitive conduct’ last night after celebrating the New Year with lavish holidays or by sipping champagne at an exclusive Commons fireworks party.
Among them were Chancellor George Osborne, who defied austerity Britain by taking a luxury break at Prince Charles’s favourite ski resort, Klosters. Ironically, it was Mr Osborne who coined the phrase ‘we’re all in this together’ when calling for massive cuts to get the country out of the red at the 2009 Tory Party Conference. Meanwhile tycoon MP Zac Goldsmith was reportedly sunning himself at a £8,000-a-week villa in the Caribbean over the New Year – in contrast to David Cameron, who scrapped plans for an expensive holiday in Thailand for fear of sending the wrong message to voters.
And in London, Speaker John Bercow hosted a star-studded champagne New Year’s Eve party on the Commons riverside terrace, giving MPs a prime view of the capital’s impressive fireworks display. Among the revellers was Prisons Minister Crispin Blunt, an embarrassment in light of the fact that at the same time a riot was brewing at Ford Open Prison in Sussex.
Guests at the party, including pop singer Duffy, EastEnders actor Ross Kemp, soprano Lesley Garrett and the Speaker’s Labour-supporting wife Sally, danced the night away to a rock band.

Discreet seems to have fallen away from the vocabulary of the political/chattering classes along with various "D list" celebrities. We're going to pay for the incompetence of the previous administration and yet they just can't help themselves, though the Bercow party doesn't surprise me one bit as he was part of the previous administration supposed independent or not. The daft thing is, the Labour party will be the one which will probably benefit from this as voters are hit in their pockets despite the fact that it was their incompetence which caused the problems in the first place, yes I know it's a global recession, but it could have been a lot less worse for the UK if Labour hadn't bolloxed up the economy by profligate overspending.
Politicians still don't get it, the worse things get, the more likely extremist groups will rise promising jam tomorrow if we only do x, y, z, after all it worked for the Nazi's. On top of all this nests the spider of the EU costing us billions for few benefits that we couldn't do for ourselves if we were free of it anyway.
 So people everywhere in the UK are going to be hurting, was it too much to ask that our politicians at least acted like they cared?

Then again, these are politicians we're talking about...