UK, --Mended!!

          The Cameron millionaire cabal, are crowing about the UK recovery, they repeat their little ditty, “unemployment down”, “growth figures up”, and proceed to clink their champagne glasses. One factor that has helped the government's unemployment figures has been the massive increase in “self-employed”. According to a study done by the Resolution Foundation, over the last five years of recession self-employment has risen by approximately 650,000, and now accounts for 15% of the total workforce, a staggering 4.5 million. Self-employment, though lauded by the millionaire cabal, is not the guaranteed road to the good life, with more than a quarter of self employed living on poor incomes. Nor is self-employment the desired option, in lots of cases it was the only option to survival. The growth of self-employed is greatest in the areas of high unemployment, in London where there are well paid jobs, it is at its lowest. The study also shows that the average weekly income of someone self employed, is 20% lower than it was in 2008, and that a typical self-employed worker now earns 40% that of a typical employee. Self-employment is a precarious road to walk, for a very large proportion, the grim economic truth of self-employment is one of an uncertain future, with difficulties in getting mortgages and personal credit and no growing pension pot. 

 

Photo from A World To Win.

         Another factor that blows a hole in the Cameron Millionaire cabal's glowing picture of a mended Britain is the fact that according to official Eurostat figures, some areas of the UK are poorer than some poor countries from former communist Eastern Europe. According to their findings people in the Welsh Valleys and in Cornwall are worse off that those from Lithuania and Estonia. It also states that people from Durham and the Tees valley are poorer that those from the wealthiest regions of two of Europe's poorest countries Bulgaria and Romania. It also shows that London is the richest place in Europe.

 

"We must continue austerity, it's the only way to fix things."

 

       So the new fixed Britain is one of vast swaths of low incomes and an uncertain future, massive discrepancies in wealth between different areas, some of the poorest regions in Europe, and their policy is more of the same. Austerity is the new way of life for the ordinary people, while the millionaire parasites continue to increase their wealth. Britain is certainly fixed for the corporate class, and it is you and I that are paying for that fix. 

Visit ann arky's home at www.radicalglasgow.me.uk