Change is afoot in the
If you weren’t already afraid of terrorism, radiation, paedophilia, Islam, Armageddon or the weather, then The Financial Apocalypse was designed to strike fear into your soul. I’d imagine. Rather than frantically boarding up windows, stocking up on supplies and musing which family member you’d fuck over first if it came down to it like we would do in the event of real Armageddon, a lot of folk are sewing up their pockets and picking up placards to simultaneously cope with and complain about this course plotted for us. It does appear to be out of our hands, though we may as well chuck a union sized spanner in the works and try to stave off the misery a while I suppose.
It’s small comfort to know that this is a situation most of us are familiar with, the need to economise and to budget, to tighten our belts or to seek new work, perhaps this is why many seem to have stomached it so well so far? It certainly all seems easier to deal with than the prospect of being blown up on the train to work and luckily, this particular fear seems to have abated recently. Is tightening our belts really the right coping mechanism to solve this country’s financial problems, a way to reduce the deficit?
Since the collapse of Northern Rock in 2007 we have, it would seem, tried everything. Hundreds of billions of pounds, dollars and euros were spent worldwide throughout 2008 in loans and bailouts, some banks and financial institutions were bought out by others, some were nationalised to protect their customers. Consumer confidence nosedived and our faith in the banking system hit rock bottom. Our economy needed jumpstarting to encourage growth, we were told.
A raft of tax cuts were mooted as ways to ride these fiscal rapids to where the waves break and we’re able to breathe again, to encourage a general public already worried about its finances to ‘boost the economy’, to spend immediately any money saved through these tax breaks as well as any which may be stashed away, before it’s too late. This was our proverbial rainy day. This solution is typified by the temporary reduction of V.A.T towards the end of 2008. Designed to boost consumer confidence (not to mention the national coffers) this cut in V.A.T saved a grateful public 2.5% on everything to which the standard rate was applicable. Temporarily. Little did we know that in December of 2008, we were supposed to be spending for our lives - that’s not exactly how it was sold to us - I suppose the presumption was that we instinctively would.
It was all to be in vain. By the end of January 2009 we were firmly in recession. What was to follow would be a year of bust businesses, pay freezes, a shrinking economy. Rising unemployment, soaring national debt and diminishing manufacturing output, record lows in interest rates, record numbers of insolvencies, record numbers of people seeking debt advice, record after record after demoralising record. Predictions of ‘A DECADE OF PAIN’ were bandied about, unemployment kept rising and protests reared up. Even bankers started to blame the banks.
We were an unhappy and confused peoples. Something called quantitative easing (overly complicated, essentially printing money) was swiftly introduced and exploited to the maximum, which led to Gordon Brown briefly being hailed as the saviour of the universe before it quickly became apparent that this didn’t work either. By the time 2010 came about we’d suffered the longest and deepest recession on record, another new low.
And so the U.K limped bleeding into 2010, an election year with a difference. Not only had enough time elapsed since the last Conservative government for those who swore “never again” to consider the Tories a credible alternative once more, the public at large seemed genuinely disaffected by a New-Labour government coming across as a spent force. A nation was on the fence and needed some serious convincing over which way to jump; all anyone really seemed to be certain of was that we needed an alternative, a change.
It was, no doubt, with this in mind that the political party leaders were wheeled out for the first Televised Party Leader Debates. There they were in their Sunday best, the now all too familiar Gordon Brown, looking like my testicles having been beaten up by politics, David Cameron with the shiniest shoes you ever did see and Nick Clegg, leader of the Liberal Democrats apparently, there to make up the numbers. With hindsight it’s easy to see that this was always going to boil down to style over substance, but did Gordon realise his number was up? It looked like it… he must’ve, stood beside his younger, better looking, well finished and actually smiling opponents. All he could do was land a few well thought out blows before disappearing beneath a flurry of stylish and charismatic jabs thrown by top-hatted show boaters who know that they’re better. His stamina saw it through to the end but this was a heavy defeat on points for Mr. Brown, and one which might just retire him.
The people of the U.K wanted a change and G.B looked far from it. Dave the Chameleon however, with his slick veneer and this Nick Clegg, the new guy, seemed more than capable (after the odd appealing sound-bite) of delivering the change we so craved. And how! The Murdoch/Cowell inspired showpiece of the 2010 General Election had offered a choked electorate a glimpse of how it should be, and we voted in our droves. The game changed, and now little under a year later the common consensus seems to be that it’s changed too much. Low interest rates and tax benefits encouraged us to reduce our personal debt and pay off mortgages rather than spend spend spend to boost the economy. How prudent, how foolish of us. We won’t be given such an opportunity to screw the economy ever again, bad public, bad…
Our newly elected Coalition government saw how much we liked to save our spare money when possible and removed the opportunity. The obstinate alternative sails headstrong against the tide of change it rolled in upon and we the people are never satisfied.
Things must change. Again. Still.
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