Another Gift from the Austerity Confidence Fairy

Thankfully, it's the UK, and not us, but this is unbelievably grim:

George Osborne's austerity programme will cut the living standards of Britain's families by more than 10% over the next three years as those on the lowest incomes suffer most from the tax increases and spending cuts designed to reduce the budget deficit.

A study from the Institute for Fiscal Studies, the UK's leading experts on the public finances, concludes that the chancellor's strategy will result in greater inequality and rising child poverty, throwing into reverse progress made in the final years of the last Labour government.

The bleak picture painted by the IFS will be used by opponents of the chancellor's austerity measures to call for a plan B to generate faster economic growth. There is likely to be further pressure on Osborne on Monday as the head of his independent commission on banking, Sir John Vickers, outlines measures for banking reform.

I'm more of a cynic than the author, Larry Elliott, economics editor of The Guardian, because I believe that part of the reason that Osborne is supporting this is because of the, "greater inequality and rising child poverty, throwing into reverse progress made in the final years of the last Labour government."

They are determined to roll back whatever minor progress occurred under Blair and Brown, and move back to where Thatcher and Major left the nation.

And once they've done that, they want to take Britain back to the Dickensian standards of the middle of the 19^th century.