Austerity- Did you Really think it would be Over?

Austerity is a word few people had heard of until a few years ago, and it was never used before in the context it is today. It is a very neo-Orwellian term indeed; it conjures up images of a frugal old vicar's wife from a small country village diligently sorting her pennies and peeling the potatoes as close as possible so as not to waste them... In truth it means that the people of a nation have to pay through the nose to repair the financial vandalism of a clique of mega-rich plutocrats. There is enough capital in the coffers of what David Rothkolf calls the "superclass" that they could settle their own deficits with what to them would be loose change, but they won't; and no state institution is willing to force them because they are totally in the pockets of the very same superclass. There have been warning rumblings for some time that George Osborne, the UK Chancellor of the Exchequer, would be the bearer of bad news at the Autumn Statement and sure enough, he was. He had to tell the world that the Conservative Lib-Dem coalition, also known as the David Cameron and Nick Clegg Government plc, had failed to pay back its "debts", the non-existent fiat money donated by the banking system. As a result Osborne has announced a new wave of spending cuts that are even more draconian than what we've had to endure so far. I say "we", but I don't include Osborne himself in that; no, he will be fine on his ministerial salary. As per usual, the poorest and most vulnerable people in society will be handed the bill; old people, the unemployed, single parents, the disabled. They'll be squeezed again to see if any more drops will come out. According to the Institute of Fiscal Studies the austerity of the last few years has only relieved thirty five billion pounds off the ninety billion pound debt bill; there's another fifty-five billion to go. The Tories want the debt paid off by 2017 which means Osborne is instituting cuts to welfare and public services unlike anything seen since the 1930's. The suffering and misery this will cause is going to be beyond anything in our experience, see: http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-30327717. Of course there's a general election in May next year so you can always vote in Labour; however Labour have basically the same idea. Ed Balls, the shadow Chancellor, has a similar austerity plan. It's not quite so extreme... at least he's saying that now before the election... and therefore it will be far longer before the debt is cleared; but it is based on the same underlying principle. Osborne has hit back at the IFS by called their predictions "hyperbolic", which means exaggerated. In his BBC interview he mentions George Orwell's Road to Wigan Pier, one of Orwell's autobiographical books where he travels over the north of England sharing the lives of miners, slum-dwellers and other victims of the Great Depression. Maybe Osborne was trying to head off his own criticism because that's exactly what I was thinking about, and I doubt if I'm the only one. He has also tried to lighten the mood of his address by proudly boasting about how unemployment has dropped by 1.8 million, but are those figures accurate? Jobless statistics are very easy to massage. How many of these new workers are on the minimum wage? Are those on JSA "work experience" included as people in paid employment, see: http://hpanwo-voice.blogspot.co.uk/2013/09/tory-boy-wants-more-slaves.html? What's more Britain might be a geographical island, but it's not a monetary one; it is part of a global economy and our prosperity is dependent on that of other countries. Almost a quarter of a century after the fall of the Soviet Union, Russia has regained its status as one of the world's most powerful nations, yet President Putin has just publicly reported that Russia is riven with economic strife, see: http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-europe-30322198. During the last few years, some people have regarded the recession as they would an impending hurricane. They've been boarding up their windows and gone and huddled in the cellar waiting and hoping, knowing that it will only be a matter of time until the storm passes and we can all come out of our shelters and bask in the sun again. This attitude has been encouraged by the government, both Labour and Lib-Dem/Tory, since the 2008 crash. But the storm will never end, at least while we still keep hanging on and believing the Chancellor. The storm will pass when we make it pass by taking control of our own economic world through small businesses, local trading and workers cooperatives etc, for example see: http://hpanwo-voice.blogspot.co.uk/2014/02/the-oxford-pound.html.