New Statesman letter on Osborne`s mistake

Disingenuous as ever, Tory MPs are now, according to George Eaton, making excuses for George Osborne`s mishandling of the tax credits` issue, by claiming he was ignorant of the massive hardship the cuts would cause for "relatively impoverished people", because of  "a technical mistake" (Politics: How the tax credit climbdown humbled a chancellor thought to be at the height of his powers,30 October). With over 1200 staff employed at the Treasury, including, according to the Independent at the weekend, eight special advisers costing the taxpayer over £500,000 a year, it is hard to believe that someone didn`t carry out an "impact assessment". Next they`ll be telling us they didn`t know, not only about the steel industry being under threat because of unfair Chinese competition, but that quantitative easing works elsewhere in the world to stimulate economies, so long as banks are not the direct recipients. I don`t suppose the Tories will acknowledge, either, that the Northern Powerhouse is just a wheeze drummed up just before what was thought was an unwinnable election, and which can`t possibly work anyway, when councils are having their government grants decimated, or that tax avoidance measures are also suffering the consequences of a "technical mistake", that of sacking thousands of staff at HMRC!

 Tories are very keen to repeat the party`s propaganda about having a "long term economic plan", but less enthusiastic about mentioning its results, with economic growth destined to be as low as 0.3% in the next quarter; they must know that such downward trends are inevitable, when the bases of government policy is for the already prosperous to accumulate even greater wealth,  and the spending capability of the working people to be reduced. They certainly have "got too far down the pipe", as Tory MP Stephen McPartland so eloquently put it; sadly, with their policies, the "pipe" in question has to be a sewer!