Spending Review Hits North Hardest
Tagged as: analysis austerity cuts local resilienceNeighbourhoods: northern_england
The comprehensive spending review announced last week will have a worse impact on people with below-average income. Now it's been shown that the North of England will be hit worse than the South.
A briefing report entitled "Well North of Fair" by think-tank IPPR North on 25th October 2010 has shown that the North of England will be disproprtionately affected by the cuts compared to the UK as a whole, and the South East in particular.
Although IPPR describe themselves as 'independent, radical and progressive,' they have close links with the Labour Party and are proud to have defined the centre ground of (what they view as) progressive politics since 1988. As for being radical, it's clear from the introduction and conclusions of the briefing that their idea of radicalism means re-balancing the economy in a slightly different way than the present government. The report clearly assumes that economic growth is the goal to be sought - for them, the present debate is just about how to distribute this growth 'fairly'.
What they don't question (as usual), and what would indeed mark them out as radical, would be to question that assumption - that continuing economic growth is desirable, or even possible. They haven't grasped the fact that capitalist social relations are inherently unfair, and that no amount of 'rebalancing' is going to change that.
Despite these caveats about their short-sightedness, the report does a good job of explaining how and why we are getting shafted. To quote their summary,
"Much immediate analysis of the Spending Review has focused on its impact department by department and sector by sector. There has also been a lively debate about its impact on different sections of society and in particular on those who depend on the welfare state. This short analysis explores the impact of the Spending Review from a geographical perspective and asks the question: is it fair on the North of England?
This report explores the extent to which the Spending Review will ameliorate or exacerbate the North-South divide. In considering jobs, welfare, capital investment and public services it draws a stark conclusion: things look set to become significantly worse. It argues that the fundamental problem with the Spending Review - and the economic policy of the Coalition Government to date - is that it lacks an equally rigorous and challenging strategy for economic growth. In the absence of such a strategy it is argued that the North of England needs to seize the initiative itself and drive forward an economic agenda that liberates regional economic prosperity from the limitations of a Whitehall agenda tied to the demands of agglomeration in the Greater South East."
Seizing the initiative is something that could be done in different ways. What they're arguing for is a regional strategy to promote growth, but if it's time to be seizing initiatives, why not look further than that? Why not ask how we and our communities can escape from working to create surplus value? How about putting our efforts into building up community resilience, growing our own food, taking care of each other and determining for ourselves what kind of production our community needs?
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