(Cut and paste the link)

Today, George Osborne, in his budget speech, announced a major cut to tax credits, including a new limitation on how many children you could claim for.

How do the British people hold Cameron, Osborne, and their colleagues to account for the lies they have already told, and the pledges they have already broken?

If you look at that, and *still* don't think the UK's current government are despicable, out-of-touch arseholes who revel in pissing on the poor and the vulnerable, I'd like to remind you that Iain Duncan Smith is still alive, and this is how he conducts himself:

http://www.newstatesman.com/politics/2015/07/whats-iain-duncan-smith-visibly-excited-prospect-hurting-poor

It is this kind of pathetic and hate filled tripe that reminds me why it is no longer worth bothering with political discussion on the forum. Iain Duncan Smith being alive is such a terrible thing to you, is it? You need to get a grip and a bit of common decency, Jamie.

As Work and Pensions secretary, Iain Duncan Smith is personally responsible for driving policies which have caused suffering, hardship, and in some cases death. He is guilty of manslaughter and should be in jail. I am perfectly willing to admit that I hate him, and that I hate his self-serving Tory colleagues and cronies. They are punishing the young, the sick, and the vulnerable, while protecting and further enriching the well-off. A class war is being waged in this country, and they are the generals.

Yes, it is a terrible thing that IDS is alive. Britain would be a slightly better place if he were dead. I am not afraid to say that.

Not afraid to say it? Are you under the impression it takes courage to wish death upon someone from a small corner of the internet?

You're a bloody disgrace. I pity you.

Why am I a disgrace? Do tell.

Do others think I am a disgrace? Am I really a disgrace for wishing ill on a politician who has made policy decisions which have killed people, and where this has been demonstrated, and where he has pushed on, even in the knowledge that killing more people was a likely consequence?

I have never done anything which, to my knowledge, has killed anyone. Mr. Smith cannot, with a straight face, say the same thing. Yet I am the one who is a disgrace.

I would like to understand why this is - from the worldview where I am the one who is wrong.

Shoot, anyone, please?

Conservatives typically value "politeness" (however they define that) over complaints, no matter how valid those complaints are. That's basically it.

I think you're okay :)

I rarely chime in on political discussions, but I will on this. Yes, anyone who wishes death on another based on his personal interpretation of morality deserves at least a bit of condemnation. I wouldn't call you a disgrace, that's painting with a brush that's much too broad, but the call for death itself is disgraceful. If that is what emerges from your so-called worldview, how is your worldview so fundamentally different than that of Ayatollah Khomeini when he issued a fatwa demanding the death of Salman Rushdie? In both cases, the call emerged from the core of supreme confidence in being morally right and a desire to create a more perfect world.

And to decide whether or not you have killed anyone as a result of your personal policy choices is probably open to some analysis. We would have to have access to a fairly complete record of your consumer behavior at the very least. People in "have" societies are part of a group that routinely kills or fatally weakens people in "have-not" societies. Be careful of the confidence you have in your moral ground. The faults will eventually bedevil you.

And, for the record, in most senses and measures, I am generally far to the left. Certainly far more so than comrade Octavious.

You're not going to let this one die, are you Jamie? Very well...

Yes, you are a disgrace. You are a disgrace to the spirit of political debate and democracy. You do nothing but preach hatred and spew out and endless stream of unfounded nonsense. Yours is not the opening position of a debate. It is the closing position of a bitter and failed argument. Their is no reasoning with you because you have slammed the door on reason before anyone has even had the chance to speak.

You have created a fiction for yourself of enemy generals leading a class war against you, with the blood of the masses on the their hands and, no doubt, a noble Jamie waving a red flag and heroically fighting back. But that is all it is, pure fiction. The war exists only in your head. You are not the last line of defence, but instead the poor tortured individual who shouts randomly at stations and people try and avoid.

You are a disgrace to this website. Whether you agree with it or not, the site leadership have made a huge effort over the past year or so to make the site a civilised place to meet, talk about diplomacy, and discuss items of interest. You take this forum and turn it into the Jamie show. You are persistently offensive in your choice of language, actively discourage debate via your gross hostility, and come across as a more extreme troll than krellin but without the sense of humour.

Most of all, however, you are a disgrace to the Left. You are an insult to the well meaning and hard working members of left wing parties who put in monumental efforts to move the debate in their direction, to convince those in the centre that they have strong and valid points, and really help those less fortunate. You throw that back in the faces. You are a walking advertisement for the evils and danger of the left. The Tories could not have invented a better argument for voting for them than people like you. For every person a well intentioned left wing argument won over, another was turned away by the vile hatred and self aggrandising nonsense you come out with. You and your kind won us the election, Jamie, I have no doubt about that.

I have no interest in political debates here any more as your kind have killed them off. I am done here, and I am quite happy ignoring every thread you make that doesn't specifically mention me. This discussion is over.

The problem with saying X is wrong then attacking Y who supports it is that it allows Y's supporters to discuss the attack on Y rather than the policy X.

Octavious, how do you feel about the Conservatives' U-turn on cutting tax credits?

Are you referring to the question time quote that child tax credit wouldn't fall? There is enough wriggle room for it not to count as a broken promise. The only cut is to tax credits for children after the first 2, and it only applies to children born after April in 2017. Nobody alive (or even conceived) now has been cut, and it is easy to avoid the impact of this cut by choosing not to have a large family.

Personally I have no problems with it. In terms of the wider tax credit issue, even after the cuts they're still as high as they were in 2008 and 3x as high as in 1998. More work needs to be done to keep work a better option than benefit, but generally speaking I feel the budget was a good step towards a better way of doing things.

@Octavious - you are incorrect that the only change is that from 2017 for people who have more than two children. The income thresholds change in 2016 as do the taper relief rates. I know these are technical changes that probably don't mean much to people who aren't reliant on welfare so let me quote an example provided by the Low Income Tax Reform Group..."Krysten is a lone parent with two children. She works 30 hours a week and claims tax credits including some help with childcare costs of £150 a week. Her salary is £18,000. Her 2015/16 tax credits award is around £11,600. Krysten will see that reduced by £2,050 in 2016/17."

Do you still say that these reductions don't amount to a broken promise?

I agree that tax credits should always be kept under review to ensure that help reaches the most vulnerable and are not used to prop up poverty pay. But it is clear that the higher minimum wages do not compensate people for the tax credit withdrawals and, of course, those who benefited most from tax credits (those with children) are adversely affected the most.
Also politicians shouldn't be making statements that give them wriggle room and we certainly shouldn't be encouraging them to frame their answers so that they can so easily do the opposite as to what was clearly suggested.

The child tax credits, which is the only bit I've seen linked to a promise of any kind, changes in 2017. Other tax credits change before then. I have absolutely no idea how the tax credit system works now, nor indeed a few years ago when I actually got them. Indeed one of the worst things about them is the insane complexity of the system.

Was there ever an implication that tax credits as a whole wouldn't be cut? I don't remember thinking so. There was definitely a big push to make people better off in work, which this budget hasn't helped in a number of cases, and the tax burden has not been balanced well in terms of who pays the largest slice.

Still, it's early days and I have a strong feeling that the government are trying to get the awkward stuff out of the way early when there is no credible opposition to speak of and the general public have plenty of time to forget about it. I'm reserving judgment until I see a few more pieces of the puzzle.

But that's about as much as I want to say on the subject. It's not exactly the most interesting of topics.

@Octavious - you're incorrect again - Child tax thresholds and the taper adjustment apply from 2016. These result in an actual cut in Child tax credit next year. This is something David Cameron specifically said he wouldn't do.

Do you now accept that he has broken his pre-election promise?

We can have a discussion on the merits of reform of tax credits, but the main point here is that politicians should set out their intent before an election clearly and be held to account if they fail to deliver on their promises.

I had distinct impression he wasn't going to cut any tax credits, I though he might freeze them leading to a real terms cut after allowing for inflation.

Tell you what, Maniac, you explain in detail with links to government sources exactly what this child tax credit change actually is, and then give me a link to Cameron saying he wasn't going to do it, and I'll let you know if I think it was a lie or not. My knowledge of the tax credits come entirely from a BBC news report and a copy of the Mirror, and I never actually heard him make any promises myself.

But seriously, in the grand scheme of things this is pretty small beer. I have no idea why we're even talking about it.

Will source the links for you Octavious when have bit more time.

i don't accept that this is small beer for two reasons (1) we need to believe in our politicians, look at LibDems (2) the affects on some of the most vulnerable will be dramatic, not by your standards perhaps, but every £1 has to be accounted for by some of these families and this will adversely affect their lives. Improving the lot of the most vulnerable in society should be a primary aim of government IMO.