When the recession started last year, most British households cut their cloth accordingly. Reduced unnecessary outgoings, started to pay more off the credit cards and, despite rates that are the lowest since the Bank of England opened its doors, they even began bunging cash into the savings accounts. But not the Government.
The Government couldn’t act like us because, if they had, we would now be looking at something much closer to the Great Depression than the Vera Lynn revivals and fascist outrages on the streets would have you believe we are. The taps had to be turned on. But even accounting for the bank rescues, the guaranteeing of the bonuses and the increased welfare costs, it is impossible to escape the fact that our debt as a proportion of GDP is growing to astronomical ‘chop-the-credit-card-with-the-kitchen-scissors’ levels and that, worst of all, we have next to no intention of paying it all back, preferring instead to let deflation take care of it and no matter if that screws the savers and the pensioners.
Still, at least our leaders and would-be leaders are, at last, pledging to get to grips with our free-wheeling, high-spending public services, because – you know – it was those hospitals with all the crazy drugs they were buying and the spendthrift social workers that caused the meltdown, not a bunch of over-paid coke heads in bad suits acting like their nations’ economies were a roulette wheel, right?
So, much as a couple argues the toss over classing spending on a holiday or that new plasma screen TV as ‘essential’, our politicians are now trying to convince us that the other side will do the evil cutting. Emotive accusations that they will stop paying to educate the leaders and wealth-creators of the future while they won’t be able to afford to have the bins emptied weekly will drive us all mental between now and Election Day. Meanwhile, each will be spinning that they are the only ones able to rid us of all the troublesome bureaucrats and unnecessary ‘costs’ that we won’t miss when they are snipped.
Instead of Tory Cuts v Labour Investment (as the last three elections have run) this time, they will be arguing debating the nuances of millions and billions spent on paperclips and kidney transplants in an attempt to persuade of the stirring ideological differences existing between them. Don’t fall for the bullshit.
The Tories, always chief cronies to the wealthy, and Labour, up the arses of the fat cats for 12 years and counting, are not our friends. They are equally guilty of allowing the people who caused this shitstorm to run away laughing while we carry the can for their hubris. Not all bankers are evil, but the mud-slinging between them and the politicians over who to blame is the show to distract from the sleight of hand that picks our pocket, even as the seeds of the next catastrophe are already being sewn. Stay alert and keep a tight grasp on your wallet.
4 comments
Very well put, I’d say.
The Institute for Fiscal Studies reckons the STRUCTURAL deficit in the government finances is now £100 billion. So I’m afraid there really is a problem in the public finances, regardless of the credit crunch.
That’s true Adam. I don’t doubt that something had to be done as the banks started to collapse otherwise we would be in a much worse hole now.
But the idea that this is a temporary blip and we will be back to normal before too long is madness – and not borne out by the figures.
That’s exactly the point. It is not a temporary blip. And it wasn’t caused by the banks. It was caused by systematic failure by the current government to control public spending.