The Unavoidable Budget

Reviewing the budget speech after work today, I was struck by the language used by the ConDems, threaded through with a sinister sense of disassociation, a classic identifier of sociopathy.

George Osborne started the ball rolling, repeating the word ‘unavoidable’ several times in his speech, and tonight in his televised announcement.  There’s something brutally absolutist about the fallacy of no alternative, and an abandonment of responsibility to those who forced a no-choice scenario.

Vince Cable, who has long since abandoned any credibility in his search for a seat at the big table, continued the dis-associative theme after the budget when he claimed that:

“I have no doubt that the budget will be vilified by those who wish to undermine the coalition government or who do not understand the depths of the crisis into which our country has sunk.”

Portraying those who disagree with the ConDem budget as either the enemy or stupid is painting an intentionally dishonest false dichotomy in an attempt to discredit critics.  Such language is again absolutist, staking the ground out as a martial “you’re either with us or against us”.

The message is utterly fundamentalist: savage cuts or doom, and if you disagree you’re the enemy.

Little more than a big fuck you to justify an act of collective punishment on those in the poverty trap, the disaffected and those without a voice, the people who will pay the most for this budget.