Oh dear, Mr Osborne, you are such a pillock

As austerity begins to bite, yet another soundbite from George Osborne: “We borrowed our way in, now we must earn our way out.” What’s with all this ‘we’ sh*t, Keemosabee?

In the Budget, the Chancellor insisted that nobody would lose any money. In fact, what the Draper did was to cave in to the populist sense that the Silver Boomers have had it far too easy, and thus need a damn good caning.

There is not a shred of empirical evidence for this. Had Silvers been allowed some interest on savings, their generally credit-free existence could’ve stimulated the post 2008 economy wonderfully: at 24% of  homes and 45% of all credit-free purchases, it’s an argument that’s hard to fault.

But what we’ve had instead is four years of relentless zero-rates designed to save the banks. Not only has this crushed the income of pensioners, it has condemned the economy to flatlining mediocrity. However, George Osborne – who, after this mess has panned out, will undoubtedly be elevated as Lord Mugger of Bullingdon – lacks the cojones to take on Dave’s mates in the banks. So on top of the pension tax raids of Glum Gordon, the QE that erodes the income of every pensioner, and the Zirp that drives it close to zero, he has now chosen to freeze allowances for the same group.

Pensioners aren’t currently taxed on the first £10,500 of their income. This will now be frozen in future years, saving the Treasury £360 million next year, £670 million in 2014, £1 billion in 2015 and £1.25 billion in 2016. That’s a lot less money for the Old, and a lot more money with which the Treasury can do, um, what exactly?

Well, the answer seems to be cut the 50% top tax rate for those earning over £150,000 a year…by, er, 5p; and to do a U-turn on removing child allowances for those earning over £43,000 a year.

Just to put those numbers into some kind of perspective, research suggests that the average UK pensioner wants to retire on around £24,300 to see them through to God’s waiting room. In fact, the average pension savings of people retiring between the ages of 50 to 64 last year was £91,900 – enough to produce an annual income of about £3,500 to £4,000.

The median average salary-linked public sector pension currently being paid out to a beneficiary is worth £5,600 a year. That compares with £5,860 in the private sector, according to the National Association of Pension Funds (NAPF). As these are actually remarkably close levels, we need only add the average State pension at £5304 pa to arrive at a figure of roughly £11,000 a year for the top end of the bottom, so to speak.

I am no egalitarian Leftie leveller. As regular Sloggers will have recognised long ago, I accept the fact that every pack-animal society will have inequities. But a society that wants to reward an average working salary of £95,000 with tax cuts plus undeserved child allowances – and punish the tax-free allowance of more vulnerable citizens earning an average of £11,000 per annum – is a society that has completely lost the plot.

The success of Homo sapiens is based on both competition and cooperation.

I fully accept that the amount of social welfare in fat Western societies needs to be reduced. In the first decade of the euro, the zone’s share of world GDP declined by 20.7%. During the decade of the 1990s, its world trade share fell 15.0%. During the 1980s, it declined just 7.5%. The one major element added over that period was massive social welfare.

But what makes our UK pensioners different is that they have paid in far more than most to fund their entitlement. Thanks to six decades of zero investment in what the Baby Boomers paid in, they are now being offered a risible amount on which to live in their twilight years. Adding to this the removal of their ability to earn from investments is bad enough; to then dump on them frozen future allowances represents a cowardice of astonishing profundity.

And this is why the sub-head to this piece is justified. George Osborne is a pillock unable to understand how much inequities of income, innate British ageism, and inequality before both the Law and the job market are storing up a volcanic magma of bitter resentment. I’d love to record that Ed Balls might be the man to put this right. But the reality is that Miliband’s other Ed has no better grasp of the game-changer coming our way than the Squeaky Person Chancellor.

When credit obligations bugger our banks – and eurodebt sinks our major trading partner – everything we’ve heard about today will fade into insignificance. All that will remain is the narrow, blinkered injustice of this Budget.