Government cuts: Killing the aspirations of a generation

By Bryony King / @bryonyvk

The government may have appeared to be on the side of the less affluent family yesterday, but breaking their promise not to cut universal Child Benefit seems to me to be just the start of a continued assault on families. The way this new Child Benefit system will be worked out (based on single salaries and not a means test of total household income) just shows further disregard for single parent families. Let’s not forget amid the ‘well actually this isn’t that bad’ cut what the government have already done to families (and more importantly children) or that they have already frozen Child Benefit for the next three years.

First the government cut the Building Schools for the Future programme, depriving children from some of the poorest families of state-of-the-art schools and facilities. Do the Tories not want children from poorer backgrounds to get a decent education? That’s what it seems like. All I can say is thank god I went through high school, college and university during a Labour government because I don’t think I could have done it now.

I come from an area with less than brilliant schools, although now we have a new academy just down the road, which already seems to be achieving good results. This academy only just escaped the cuts, making it to financial close on the day that David Cameron became Prime Minister.

They also scrapped Sure Start, pregnancy grants, housing benefits, lowered the total earnings threshold for Child Tax Credits. Families and children are the losers with this government and we shouldn’t forget that simply because George Osborne was reasonable for one day.

This government is going to kill the aspirations of a generation, penalising the children of the less privileged. What did these children ever do to deserve it? Once again those who can least afford it will be paying the price for the actions of the ludicrously wealthy. Not only will these children pay financially, they are paying with their futures. This is wrong, this is unfair and we need to stand up and fight it.