Greens get social priorities right

Kat Boettge, lead MEP candidate

This government would have us believe that we are better off managing on our own.

Get the state “off our backs”, allow us to “keep more of our own money” and we will “manage just fine”. So it commits itself to continuing to reduce taxes, Corporation Tax on companies (reduced from 28% to 21% since 2010) and Inheritance Tax (already only paid on 5% of estates and set to be far fewer if Cameron and co are re-elected) in particular.

Meanwhile public services, particularly those provided by local authorities, are slashed to the bone, and spending on “welfare” is squeezed and scorned, with the reasonable desire to have a “spare bedroom” denied to those too poor to ” pay their own way” , and with high quality Surestart child care provision, and Day Centres for the elderly and disabled, all but wiped off the map.