You simply cannot beat a Michael Moore documentary repeat to jig some hatred, fire and disgust in your belly targeted directly at the heart of Capitalisms failures and greed. If anyone let me watch his series of films, the other recession films and Al Gore’s lovely uplifting global warming piece in one calendar day i’m confident i’d of topped myself by now, or at least attempted to go postal.
My anger rant this week was kick started by the BBC Euro Recession map, and my inevitable shock at the state of the Eurozone. Wow – aren’t we screwed. What i don’t understand is how if everyone is in what amounts to € trillions of debt, we can possibly consider providing a loan of £7bn to Ireland. Sell our gold to China why don’t you. Thanks Gordon.
Why the rant? We’ve got hundreds of families worried about where their next meal will come from, areas in the north that are comparable to regions of Afghanistan in terms of desolate and deserted houses, roads and even towns. In these places you can’t give the houses away to even those who are dying for opportunity – the areas are so dead there’s no work as there are simply no businesses.
If the only industry in an area is inflated branches of the public sector. During a time when cuts are incoming and ongoing – how are these losing their jobs going to find new ones, nevermind those there weren’t enough public sector jobs for to start with?
Sorry – not everyone can simply up and move to London, and realistically – there’s no room at the Inn.
You only have to watch one episode of “the secret millionaire” to bring a tear to the eye and you’ll find yourself marching on Westminster yourself.
The military? Well – i’ve numerous friends now who’ve just lost out on their childhood dream (After pursueing it for ~15 years) now that they’ve canned harriers and essentially left us with a squadrons of Typhoons that are, contrary to what’s been fed to the media, simply not battle worthy. Meanwhile on the ground, soldiers are off to war for their country, only too often losing their lives, for £17,014 a year. Maybe those BA cabin crews will think twice next time they decide to go on strike because they arent happy with their pay rises during a global recession.
If a Soldier went on strike they would be locked up, court marshalled and lives could potentially be lost. If cabin crew want to go on strike all that happens is they ruin our long awaited and hard earned holidays. I hope BA replaces them instantly with the first hard working person in the queue desperate for a job.
Anyway, back to the economy. Let’s name a few countries currently suffering the worst effects of the recession: Spain, Greece, Ireland
Lets compare the Eurozone’s level of deficit for each of those countries:
11.2%, 13.6%, 14.3% respectively – the three highest levels of deficit in Europe? No, I lie, That would be us. Yes, the UK is the country with the third highest GDP per capita, yet we’re the 3rd worst for deficit (11.5%).
And what do the stats say countries with high deficit have in common?
Unemployment. Spain, Greece and Ireland are some of the worst offenders for unemployment rates, and with our new cuts you cant help but wonder what we’re doing to stop our unemployment levels jumping into the red alongside Spain and Ireland.
Times are not good, and it seems not one of our newly elected ‘revoloutionary’ politicians is willing to stick their neck on the line, make a stand, and have the balls to do something about the impending failure of our country. It’s not like we haven’t seen it coming, we’re the kings of Political Correctness, Human Rights gone too far, ‘no win no fee’, Media dominated politics, derivatives .. the list goes on; Now we add recession, unemployment, banking friendly government and Europe to the mix – what chance do we have?
So what will these cuts achieve? Well, currently the interest on our debt is so great it’s almost a waste of time writing it down the national debt because the figure will of changed so dramatically by the time you’ve read it. Probably easier to Google for it yourself! Lets just say it’s circa £1 trillion. oh my. The interest alone is currently around £44bn (according to the spending review, is more than we spend on schools), meaning our government cuts of ~£30bn in June are not even enough to balance the interest, and so the debt will continue to rise even with the hardship. Is it worth it?
While i can’t deny having less students go to university will increase the value of my degree, you cant help but sympathise with students going to university now; with student debt of anywhere between ~£30-100k, on top of the nations involuntary ~£20k national debt per person to pay off the banks that we all hate so much, what hope do we have? The only sector that asks for first class degrees from top 20 universities is the financial sector (arguably the cause of all of these problems), paying the most amount of money for more of our smartest kids to improve the banking sectors wealth and further increase the rich-poor divide.
It seems nobody has any balls any more – we have huge problems of never before seen magnitude, and politicians that are becoming more and more middle of the road that now all that happens is a group debate on how little of a decision they have to make, with the smallest action possible taken and in the grand scheme of things – nothing really changes.
Don’t get me started on voting – why we can’t just have one person one vote i don’t know. AV and FPTP are about as democratic as North Korea is friendly.
Here is today’s list of BBC doom and gloom articles. When you’re hitting 4 a day you really should start to worry:
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-11830532
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-11830532
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-11833652
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-europe-11830460
On top of impending Euro-doom, UK recession, tax hikes, unemployment and protests; is it just me that thinks we’re remarkably overdue a catastrophic event [insert specifics (terorrist attack, double dip, war with n.korea)]?
I pretty much have nothing to offer as a solution, all i know is that we’re very close to the point of rubicon and something pretty drastic is going to have to happen soon in order to recover our mighty country to it’s glorious powerful self again, and i can’t help but think the Prince’s wedding isn’t it.
Ttax cuts might help, and i mean real ones, not a 2.5% VAT drop.. Simple theory really, cut tax, cause spending, generate revenue and more taxable income. You end up with the same tax incoming as more is spent, yet everyone feels less pinch and as the increased spending generates growth, the taxable GDP will increase! Simples!
Some times you do have to wonder – could Clarkson really do much worse at number 10 than the current crop? Probably not. At least he might not be oblivious to the likes of the banking heads, murdochites and the global companies buying our great companies (kraft), football clubs (pick one), assets (bye gold!) and tradition (what military?).
The question is – what’s the countries key priority? What has capitalism screwed up the most and how do we fix it? Which shining star is going to King Arthur our asses out of this mess? Back to basics methinks!
After that – cheer yourself up with this nice picture of a cute little kitten:
