The tories claim they have the interests of this country's education at heart; so why cut Educational Maintenance Allowance which allow the poorest children aged 16-19 to go to college?

Blanchflower? I can do that for you.
"THERE WILL BE A DOUBLE DIP RECESSION. ANF IF THERE'S NOT, THERE SHOULD HAVE BEEN".

Not that I have any interest in defending the Tories, but it should also be noted that RIGHT UNDERNEATH THE GRAPH IT SAYS:

"It should be noted that the bottom decile contains many households with temporarily low
incomes, for whom income based analysis, as opposed to expenditure based analysis, may not
give an accurate picture of living conditions. In this decile, around 40 per cent of households
contain an adult that is self employed or a student. While some of these households will have
permanently low incomes, many will not. In contrast, in the second decile, only around 20 per
cent of households contain an adult in one of these groups."

Mike: the title refers to the fact that taken in isolation from the pre-announced Budget measures, the spending review hits the poorest hardest.

As I said at the top of the post, look at the green line.

Not only have the poorest decile been hit hardest but also the second decile suffers more than the richer groupings. This doesn’t even cover the fact that someone on £50 a week is obviously going to be hurt more from a 1.5% cut to their income than someone on £550 a week.

Is it true that EMA for 16-19 year olds is to be scrapped,and if so when from? I beleive that this benefit is currently allocated unfairly.

I am worried, and this rarely happens.It was appauling the laugh riot they made of the questiona nd answer sessiona nd davey poo managed to avoid answering anything and rather dramatically changed topic to continue repeating his latest propaganda.

protecting capital spending was quite wise. the spending cuts will have the effect of keeping interest rates lower for longer, this will help boost the private sector. i wouldn't be surprised if the economy starts to grow stronger in a year or two.

To all of you who think these spending cuts weren't as bad as they could have been; think about what you're saying? It was Cameron and Clegg who told us that we needed the most savage of cuts to avoid the country 'going bust'. So if they aren't as bad as Cameron and Clegg told us they need to be, it surely stands to reason (in their logic) that their deficit reductions plans won't work!

We all know the cuts were hyped up and then scaled back, with the exception of those on welfare. Be under no illusion, this is a massive destruction of our welfare state.

This will backfire on Cameron and Clegg, just wait and see.

Luddite: Georgie boy likes to take credit for saving us all, when we were on the 'brink of catastrophe' and for steering us nicely out of a recession and into growth, when actually it was messers Brown and Darling. Georgie, you don't have the intellect luvvy!

I have to laugh at how Osborne gets it all wrong on Employment & Support Allowance! He makes a big din about only being able to claim it for a maximum of 12 months. What the dimwit doesn't tell you all is how it only applies to contribution based Employment & Support Allowance. Once the contribution period runs out, the claimant will simply revert to income based Employment & Support Allowance. The net saving will be minimal because the claimants who qualify for the contribution based ESA will have exhausted any savings they possess after 12 months and will therefore qualify for the income based variant.

Is this what he calls 'dealing with the deficit decisively'?

Does this man think anything through?

The 'anomaly' has yet to come to the surface, but it will. Laughable!

Going back to my post on ESA. The quarterly figures to February 2010 show that of a total 479 thousand ESA Claims, only 163 were contribution based. The number of people still on ESA also dramatically reduces after the first year by around 50%. So in any one quarter the maximum saving is likely to no more than 80 thousand claims. The problem Osborne has is that a high number of these 80 thousand contribution based claimants would otherwise be able to claim Income Based ESA anyway. The rule is that if you don’t qualify for the contribution based variant you have to be considered for income based ESA. So Osborne’s savings are not going to be what he thought of, but it will sound good in the papers! Does he not consider any facts?

Jim: Because the likes of Osborne are bedfellows of the Bankers. Cameron, Clegg, Cable & Osborne love a bit of banking under the duvet you know!

@ Acamar - 'You cannot have a government imposing serious harm on children. There is a word for this, and it's abuse.' So right. Unfortunately local government is already implementing huge cuts in funding for Children's and Young People's services before the impact of the CSR is even fully felt. I'm seeing whole teams and services being wiped out. This is not going to be good and there will be a social consequence and reaction.

Osborne announces the cuts without doing the maths! How can we trust a chancellor who says we will save 'billions' by reducing ESA, when in fact we are talking about a couple of million at most? These figures quoted by Osborne simply don't add up!

George, you're misinterpreting the graph. It's far worse than you're making out.

The black part of the bar chart contains the measures from the budget and previous Government, the "progressive" claims for which the IFS had already comprehensively debunked back in June.

The green part of the graph shows the additional fiscal impact of the new cuts announced as part of the spending review. They quite clearly show that the bottom 10% lose more than ANY other group, followed by the 2nd lowest 10%.

And of course that's before taking account of who will lose out from the non-availability of the public services being cut. Namely the people who rely on public services the most, as well as those who will lose their jobs.

At the end of the day one Big Society gesture would be for persons like myself, now retird, who have worked as money advisers or debt counsellors to monitor 5 real family units during the next 5 years as regards income expenditure and also spending in private sector necessitated by closure of public services eg having to buy books because local library closed down or resources cut. Theorising by comfortably situated economists and commentators is pointless. Bottom line single parent earning 18K per annum loses 1K per annum a much more desparate scenario than Professional couple income 100K per annum losing £5.5K per annum; simples!