Wake up and smell the austerity! Shock Doctrine come to Europe.

[Magda Hassan]

Here comes Cameron with the electrodes. Naturally it will be applied equally to all. Not likely.

Cameron: 'Difficult decisions' on pay and benefits

Page last updated at 11:55 GMT, Monday, 7 June 2010 12:55 UK

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David Cameron: "Britain will come out stronger on the other side"

Prime Minister David Cameron has warned of "difficult decisions" on pay, pensions and benefits as he set out the case for "painful" cuts ahead.
He said dealing with the deficit would be "unavoidably tough" and affect "our whole way of life".
He said he would not cut the deficit "in a way that hurts those we most need to help" or "that divides the country".
Shadow chancellor Alistair Darling said Mr Cameron was talking "nonsense" and did not understand the need for growth.
Spending 'splurge' The Conservative-Lib Dem coalition government has already outlined plans for £6.2bn cuts this financial year - and is preparing for a Budget on 22 June.
Mr Cameron started his speech by saying problems were "even worse than we thought" and blamed the last Labour government for the "debt crisis".
He said they had let the economy get "out of balance" by "hitching our fortunes to a select few industries", not tackling worklessness and through a "public sector splurge" - even when the private sector was shrinking.
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Labour stopped recession becoming depression

Liam Byrne Shadow Treasury chief secretary Have your say: How will cuts affect you?
Economic growth had been based on "things that could never go on forever" - "unsustainable" booms in financial services, immigration and government spending, he said.
And he said figures which the Labour government had refused to publish showed the UK would be paying £70bn in debt interest within five years - more than it spent on schools in England, tackling climate change and transport.
'Difficult decisions' "What a terrible, terrible waste of money... this is the legacy our generation threatens to leave the next," he said.
He argued that, without tackling the deficit, confidence in the British economy would take a hit which could risk pushing up interest rates and increasingly taxes would be used to pay interest on the national debt, rather than being spent on public services.
Mr Cameron said decisions were needed with "enormous implications" which cannot be ducked or got wrong, adding: "I want this government to carry out Britain's unavoidable deficit reduction plan in a way that strengthens and unites the country."
CORRESPONDENT VIEW

Continue reading the main story Peter Hunt,
Political Correspondent
It was a speech peppered with bleak language, but which contained no fresh insight into where the axe will fall.
Instead, this was David Cameron preparing the British public for what he called the "inevitably painful times that lie ahead".
He was also trying to persuade people that doing nothing about the deficit was not credible.
At one stage, Mr Cameron told his audience: "This government will not cut this deficit in a way that hurts those we most need to help, that divides the country, or that undermines the spirit and ethos of our public services".
He will be held to account over these words and they could help to define the success, or not, of his premiership.
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He added: "Because the legacy we have been left is so bad, the measures to deal with it will be unavoidably tough, but people's lives will be worse unless we do something now."
Speaking after the speech he acknowledged it would "mean difficult departmental decisions and yes it will inevitably mean some difficult decisions over big areas of spending like pay and pensions and benefits - and we need to explain those to people".
But he insisted he would protect NHS spending and international aid - both of which the Conservatives have promised to ringfence.
He did not spell out exactly where cuts would be made, saying there was a "proper process" for doing so - in the Budget on 22 June - followed by a "proper debate" involving as many people as possible about detailed three-year spending plans later this year.
Shadow chief secretary to the Treasury Liam Byrne said Labour had "stopped recession becoming depression" and had made the "right calls".
"The coalition has inherited an economy that is growing, borrowing which is falling, and unemployment lower than in America or Europe," he said.
"Everyone agrees that the deficit must fall, but we must do it fairly. And on that basis the coalition has made a poor start, cutting support from young people out of work, and breaking their promise to protect frontline services."
Hugh Lanning, deputy general secretary of the Public and Commercial Services Union, told the BBC Mr Cameron's speech was "trying to paint the public sector as a problem".
"But the debt wasn't caused by the public sector - it was caused by the banks and the financial crisis and we would like to see them share some of the pain, not just us."
He added that 100,000 civil service jobs had been cut in the past five years.
And Unison general secretary Dave Prentis said the speech was a "chilling attack on the public sector, public sector workers, the poor, to the sick and the vulnerable and a warning that their way of life will change".
"There was nothing in this speech that told the rich, the banking and financial sector or the city speculators that their privileged way of life will change," he said.http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/politics/10250603.stm