Tag: UK: Austerities

NOVANEWS By John Clarke Counterfire The greatly intensified austerity that has been imposed in the UK since 2010 has been looked to with considerable approval by right wing imitators. Among countries that had developed a relatively adequate ‘welfare state’, the attack on social provision in the UK has been outstandingly severe. One of the key elements of this has been a drive to degrade social benefit systems. The central objective has not been, as is generally claimed, to save money but rather to ensure a level of desperation that drives people into low wage precarious work and depresses the level of real wages. In Canada, where a federal system of government exists, most of the political decisions related to the undermining of social programmes are taken at the provincial lev...