Further to my article regarding the "End Of Austerity" some very interesting and devastating series of facts in this link from Comrade Loam. It lays bare the facts of how we in the UK have seen our standard of living deteriorate further in relation to inequality within the country than any other country in Europe. As far as inequality goes we look more like a third world country than a so called rich developed country.
"...purchasing power parity poorest people in the United Kingdom in the
year 2000 are poorer than any other nation in 2010 some of the poorest
10% of the population have an income on the scale which the OECD create
and I should explain this a little better to you the OECD study creates a
scale and inequality scale in the year 2000 in the United Kingdom the
poorest 10% of the population had an income which which gave them 60
points on the OECD scale the top 10% of the population of the United
Kingdom in the year 2000 had an annual income at 845 points on the same scale
60 at the bottom 845 at the top Germany is the country in the study
which comes closest to the United Kingdom at the bottom end of the scale
poorest people in Germany are at around 60 points in the scale as well
but the richest 10% of the German population have a score at the other
end of the scale lot of 845 but just above 300 and that's the closest of
any country in the whole survey including the United States so that's
in the year 2000 15 years later and uniquely in the survey poorest
people in the United Kingdom are poorer than they were in the year 2000
and there is no other country in the survey at all where 15 years later
people have fallen further back than they were 10 years earlier at the
top of the scale in the United Kingdom the richest people have moved
from 845 points on the scale now to 1150 they have broken through the
1000 barrier in Germany the most well-off have got richer - they've now
moved from just above 300 to just below 400 so the gap between
the United Kingdom and any other country in Europe which starts with
differences in equality in inequality which are absolutely striking at
the start of the period that gap has grown even further in the 15-year
period and that's what I mean I think by suggesting to you that while in
the European mainstream the gap between the top and the bottom in any
country is relatively narrow and even under the conditions of austerity
grows to a modest extent the United Kingdom begins as the most unequal
country in the European Union and that accelerates away accelerates away
even faster during the austerity years and the figures as you will know
I'm sure are not in any way one-off for the product of some strange
methodological quirk earlier this year research for the Centre for you
for European reform the Centre for European reform told the same story
at a regional level the United Kingdom has nine of the ten poorest
regions in northern Europe there is one part of Belgium that is on that
list all nine others are regions of the United Kingdom and within the
United Kingdom the gap between the richest and poorest regions is wider
than in any the European Union country and that gap the centre concludes
has widened and not narrowed during the age of austerity but simply it
seems to me that by the end of the period the United Kingdom no longer
looks like a European country the mechanisms of social solidarity which
are the project of government action have been abandoned here to
an extent unparalleled elsewhere with the gross disparities exposed in
the figures I just set out and nor of course in our country is this
dismal journey over..."
