I’ve been meaning to write about this for a while now, but what with Paul Henry and The Hobbit there hasn’t seemed like room. Now international news is likely to be dominated by the fallout from the American mid-term elections for a bit, so now or never.
Pity the people of the UK. Decades of neoliberal economics haven’t worked there any better than anywhere else in the world. The UK has hollowed out its real economy, and over invested in parasitic “financial services”. The last “Labour” government didn’t have a Michael Cullen being cautious for a decade, so the UK entered the financial crisis over-committed and under-prepared. They spent billions of taxpayers’ money bailing out banks that are “too big to fail” (more! more! cry the banks). Now the UK is now facing the bill.
The new Tory / LibDem government is embarking on a program of vicious cuts to public spending. This account is typical:
Spending review axe falls on the poor
Ceorge Osborne claims sweeping cuts will take the country back from the brink of bankruptcy
George Osborne drove his axe deep into the heart of the British state today, with a range of sweeping cuts to welfare, higher education, social housing, policing and local government that he claims will draw the country back from the brink of bankruptcy.
Outlining his long-awaited comprehensive spending review, which will cut £81bn from government spending, Osborne vowed to restore “sanity to our public finances and stability to our economy”. Perhaps the most striking of the new cuts announced was a package of £7bn in extra welfare cuts on top of the £11bn already made in the last budget.
No need to quote too much more, but here are some headlines:
But it’s not all doom and gloom! No no no, I wouldn’t want you to get that idea. Some folk are doing just fine: “UK boardroom pay leaps 55% in a year”. And internationally for example: “Goldman earmarks $17b for self-congratulation”. The ultra-rich are like cockroaches, no matter what kind of crisis is going on around them they always make out just fine…
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