Misplaced priorities

The National Pensioners Convention president is calling for an immediate increase in the state pension, the restoration of the link to earnings and a doubling of the winter fuel allowance - along with Age Concern and Help the Aged.

Meanwhile, children's charity NCH wants to see the "cycle of deprivation" broken with help for poorer families.

Britain's unions have urged Mr Darling to ignore the usual siren-song from the likes of the CBI and pay public servants decent wages while obliging business to shoulder its fair share of taxation.

However, the auguries do not look good. On Sunday, we saw the Chancellor again echoing Mr Brown's desire for a "competitive" rate of corporation tax.
The defence select committee, which has done the number-crunching, called the 52 per cent increase in the cost of Iraq operations to £1.45 billion - and this is after the much-vaunted troop reduction - "surprising," which merely demonstrates that the art of British understatement is alive and well in Westminster.

In Afghanistan, the cost has merely risen by 48 per cent to £1.42 billion - presumably the cost of airlifting out the PR "hero" Prince Harry.

MPs voted through the Ministry of Defence's "spring supplementary estimate" last night, which gave the green light to increase the military budget by these amounts.

In doing so, they should pause to consider what better things could have been done.

Britain's workers and pensioners will be anxious to know why the watchwords at home are "competitiveness" and "cost savings," while it seems that Mr Brown's original declaration that he would spend "as much as it takes" on Iraq still stands.

For such massive sums of cash to be flung into the void without any real hope or expectation that they will improve matters for the Iraqi or Afghan people is little short of obscene from a government that vetoes any progressive policies on the grounds of "affordability."

CND chairwoman Kate Hudson points out that "the human cost of the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan are clear, with an estimated 655,000 dead in Iraq alone, but the opportunities lost by spending these billions on further destruction rather than on humanitarian reconstruction adds to the long list of tragedies unleashed by Bush's wars.

"The public should be told why billions are being diverted from public services to fighting an unwanted and unnecessary war."