Remember when Gideon, Mr Osborne to you and I,
predicted in 2010 that he would balance the budget in four years.
Then our tough spell of austerity would be over and we would be awash
in the lush green shoots of growth and the entire population would
sing hallelujah Gideon. Then there was a slight re-think about those
magical green shoots of growth, and it seemed that we would have to
suffer a little more austerity, through to 2017/18. So from a four
year fix to an eight year fix, that's quite a miscalculation. Now,
Gideon's fix seems to be getting pushed a little bit more into the
future, Two economic “think tanks”, (I love that phrase, it seems
to imply that we have found some people in economics who can actually
think), have come up with another wee disappointment for Gideon. The
Institute for Fiscal Studies and the Institute for Government have
warned that the austerity measures in the UK could still be trying to
work their magic when the 2020 election comes around, with austerity being the plans for that election, and Gideon's
mythical balancing act still out of reach. Beyond that requires a very special crystal ball.
What does all this missing targets and austerity
continuing mean to us the ordinary people? Well there has already
been agreements by a number of government departments to make cuts of
between 8% and 10% for year 2015/16. This is on top of the massive
cuts we have had to Government spending, since Gideon and his gang
first mugged us in 2010. So all those who think that the worst is
over should think again. Ten years or more of cuts in benefits and
social spending, wages frozen or cut, inflation running at almost 3%,
and you can see deprivation staring you in the face for a generation
or more.
What these two “think tanks” are actually saying is, that
there is no hope of any improvement in the living conditions of the
British people for the foreseeable future, on the contrary, it is a
future of more cuts and the risk of higher taxes. Even if in the
2020's those mythical green shoots of growth do start to appear and
that magical balanced budget materialises, how long will it be before
we the ordinary people even get back to where we were in 2008? The
answer is never, it is a downward spiral and our battles and
struggles over the last couple of hundred years to improve our
standard of living will have to be re-fought. Improvements in wages
and working conditions will have to be wrestled miserly bit by
miserly bit from the capitalist greed merchants, as they were in the past. We could of course organise to
bring an end to the capitalist economic system that is the root
problem of our economic woes, and start to restructure society on the basis
of the needs of all our people. We can create a society free from
bankers and corporate control, based on communities, built on mutual
aid.
