It's a Brave New World
Or is it...
My son has just posted a rant on his blog over at The Cynical Scientist. I can't say I disagree with him. Is this country in too much debt? Yes - as a country but also as individuals, too many people have mortgaged themselves to the hilt and have loans for this and that, credit cards maxed out etc. The UKs personal debt is about £1.5 trillion (source BBC news). I can't even thing in numbers that high. So taking the World Bank published population for the UK as 61,414,062 that means we are in debt to the tune of about £25,000 each. Hang on! Each that is every man woman and child in the country. Now think on how many have no debt at all? Suddenly you start to realise the mess we are in - and I'm not talking government debt here - this is the debt people personally have.
So we have to stop living the ludicrous way but we have an economy that is pretty much funded by services and the public sector - we make precious little and a lot of our income is things like financial services and insurance.
Where is the next big thing? What is the next internet? We need to get the UK into the position to be determining that, leading that, making oodles of cash out of that. So yes cut but we need to think about investment. School building programmes cut, university fees to rise etc. etc. All the things I believe we should be actively pouring money into.
I ponder some of this as I do sitting here unemployed at the moment. I have to admit I'm going to start looking at banks for work they still seem to be recruiting in many areas so I'm as much to blame as others but I can't turn the country on my own. Frankly though where I live I can only think of a couple of manufacturing companies, and one of them is a major defence contractor that has just announced big job loses, pretty much everything else is retail, banking, insurance, health or local government. Where is the "industry" we used to have?
My son has just posted a rant on his blog over at The Cynical Scientist. I can't say I disagree with him. Is this country in too much debt? Yes - as a country but also as individuals, too many people have mortgaged themselves to the hilt and have loans for this and that, credit cards maxed out etc. The UKs personal debt is about £1.5 trillion (source BBC news). I can't even thing in numbers that high. So taking the World Bank published population for the UK as 61,414,062 that means we are in debt to the tune of about £25,000 each. Hang on! Each that is every man woman and child in the country. Now think on how many have no debt at all? Suddenly you start to realise the mess we are in - and I'm not talking government debt here - this is the debt people personally have.
So we have to stop living the ludicrous way but we have an economy that is pretty much funded by services and the public sector - we make precious little and a lot of our income is things like financial services and insurance.
Where is the next big thing? What is the next internet? We need to get the UK into the position to be determining that, leading that, making oodles of cash out of that. So yes cut but we need to think about investment. School building programmes cut, university fees to rise etc. etc. All the things I believe we should be actively pouring money into.
I ponder some of this as I do sitting here unemployed at the moment. I have to admit I'm going to start looking at banks for work they still seem to be recruiting in many areas so I'm as much to blame as others but I can't turn the country on my own. Frankly though where I live I can only think of a couple of manufacturing companies, and one of them is a major defence contractor that has just announced big job loses, pretty much everything else is retail, banking, insurance, health or local government. Where is the "industry" we used to have?
The industry was sold off in the seventies and eighties. Services paid for by public money were sold into private ownership, so any revenue that could have been put back into the economy is redirected into private pockets. Add to this, no one got a tax reduction when these resources were sold off and the public were doubly fleeced. Can you imagine how much revenue would by underpinning the economy if just BT and the utilities companies were still government owned?
ReplyDeleteIndeed.
ReplyDeleteMy Dad worked in the Dockyard - so was a "drain on the taxes" but hang on, they did all the refit work on the navy ships so it didn't have to be paid for in other companies shipyards. Also in the 60s he built subs for Canada - those earning income direct to the country and in the 70s fixed ones for the Brazilians.
Don't start on the privatisation - it all gave us reduced prices and better service and competition... how many train companies go through your station? How many water companies can you look at to get your water from? Oh and look how well these private companies have invested in the long term energy supply.... rant rant rant
Indeed.
ReplyDeleteMy Dad worked in the Dockyard - so was a "drain on the taxes" but hang on, they did all the refit work on the navy ships so it didn't have to be paid for in other companies shipyards. Also in the 60s he built subs for Canada - those earning income direct to the country and in the 70s fixed ones for the Brazilians.
Don't start on the privatisation - it all gave us reduced prices and better service and competition... how many train companies go through your station? How many water companies can you look at to get your water from? Oh and look how well these private companies have invested in the long term energy supply.... rant rant rant