Wednesday 25 April 2012

Keep Calm And Carry On

Well there you go, the Conservatives have led the UK back into recession.
The severe austerity measures didn't work so good work George, all those people out of work for nothing.
But wait, the line of sycophantic Tories are queueing up to tell any available reporter that none of the mess that we now find ourselves in is the fault of the Coalition Government whatsoever.

The blame rests entirely with:

1) the Labour party
2) Gordon Brown
3) rich people paying too much tax
4) the Eurozone crisis
5) the Global economy
6) poor people claiming benefits
7) unseasonably hot weather
8) unseasonably cold weather
9) too many public sector workers
10) public sector pensions
11) disabled people
12) the poor
13) immigrants

Not the policies of the Coalition Government, no way whatsoever. Nothing to do with them.
Keep calm and carry on people.

7 comments:

Cheezy said...

Yep. Just as the best economists predicted a couple of years ago, the UK experiment of hardcore austerity and supply-side economics is nonsense. It can't work under the prevailing conditions of vast private debt, credit not being advances, falling unemployment and incomes, and under-investment in both private and public sectors. Until economic policy starts to address the real problem in the economy (the absence of demand) then we can expect the economy to splutter on for the benefit of the few rather than the many.

Meanwhile, Stateside, less ideological governance is clearly showing that growing your way out of debt is by far the better option. Look & learn, Georgie you dunce.

Falling on a bruise said...

I am hard pressed to think what is left to cut but i can almost hear them arguing that all this means is that they need to cut harder and faster. They got lucky that the Murdoch/Hunt thing has blown up just at the right time to soften the blow.

Anonymous said...

economics isn't so complex, but engage the government and you get a mess too big to understand. too big to understand too big to manage. too big to manage, need more intervention to make corrections. more corrections, more complexity. we may never understand the origin existence, the complexity of the environment, or the complexity of the human body. but, we created economics and know exactly who to blame. look in the mirror.

q

Lucy said...

It is our fault? Care to expand?

Anonymous said...

lucy, how can it be screwed up. the government is smarter than us. it has to be because you always want to use it to fix every problem... right?

q

Cheezy said...

"it has to be because you always want to use it to fix every problem"

Is it so much that, Q? Or is that government is often the only realistic vehicle through which people can exercise the power that comes with being a citizen. If, say, a company is screwing with our lives (let's say they've polluted a river or something), what are our realistic options?

Boycott their product? Ha. Not much leverage there. Involve others in the boycott? Yeah, if you can. People will usually tend to do what it's in their economic interest to do, so that's unlikely to work. Get the media involved? Sure, but today's news is tomorrow's fish and chip paper. Our only real options in these situations are public institutions - both governmental and legal.

You can rail against government all you like - and like all other manmade things (like private companies) it's true that it can be deeply flawed - but at the end of the day it's often the only option for getting what we want.

We pay for it, so we have a say. That's only right.

This doesn't of course mean that we should support government expansion in every area, that's daft. But nor is the correct answer to every question 'there's too much government'. If what happened at the end of the noughties taught us nothing else, it should have taught us that.

Anonymous said...

ahh cheezy, once again you and i agree. i never said no government. i said not government for everything.

q