Sitting on the edge of a precipice

Over the last 9 months I have watched and listened to many commentators talk about; the state of our economy, the coalition Government and the rights and wrongs of what they are doing. I have to be honest I do not believe they are doing a very good job, but neither do I believe Labour would have done any better.

When watching discussion programmes like Newsnight, Question Time, etc I generally find there are many opinions about the state of our country and most people will state that what our Government are doing isn't thought out enough. They will state that the cuts they are making are going to far and this will send us into a double dip recession, this might well happen, who knows? But until you really look at the mess this country is in I do not believe it is very easy to make a judgement.

People have accused the Conservatives of being the same old Conservatives; a party of cuts and toffs! But the truth is this, Labour left this country in a mess and if something wasn't done quickly this country would be looking at bankruptcy.

So the Government are making cuts, which I believe they need to do but I do not believe this is going to make a huge amount of difference. This country is massively in debt, the only thing that is keeping us afloat are the financial markets and its confidence in our ability to pay back our debt. The Government have managed to maintain its triple A rating on the bond markets, which as I have mentioned in a previous post means we can borrow at a low interest rate. I am no expert but basically how bonds work is, the Government issue a bond and sell it to a trader who will know that in, say one years time he can then resell that back to the Government at a profit, and this is all based upon confidence. If the financial markets have no confidence in a countries economic position they will not buy their bonds and that is when they then end up in a situation like Greece and Ireland.

As I have said above the Government need to make cuts, but I believe front line services should not be affected. We have many chief executives on ridiculous wages, like Andrea Hill of Suffolk County Council who is paid £218,000 a year, I really believe this is far too much. This year many people are going to lose their jobs, already Norfolk County council have announced 1000 job losses, Hampshire have announced job cuts and so have many other local authorities. I wonder how many of these Chief Executives and equality and diversity managers will lose their jobs? The Government are hoping the private sector are going to grow and employ those who have lost their job in the public sector, but this is not happening. The private sector is not growing, there are companies out there who are making cuts, this week unemployment officially hit 2.5 million, and it is expected to hit 2.7 million this year.

Over the next few years money is going to be scarce, jobs are going to be hard to come by, many people will lose their jobs in the public and private sector. You would think Government would want to stimulate business but unfortunately not, these bunch of idiots in charge have decided to adopt a piece of European legislation which can only have been thought up by some boneheaded dickhead sitting in an ivory tower in the middle of a Brussels office block who has never had to run their own business. They have decided to increase maternity and paternity leave to ten months, we are in the middle of a recession and you would think that they would want to encourage business, but no, what world do these people inhabit?

Local authorities are going to have to make the money they have go further, invariably those who need the help the most will be most affected by these cuts. Next year the money local authorities get from the Government is being reduced but that ever shrinking pot of money is going to have to be spent on more and more people. Last year 215,000 immigrants settled in this country, this year that will continue, next year it will continue and so on and so forth. This means we will have more people coming here to work, use public services, schools, hospitals, etc. They will need to be housed, that means the ever decreasing housing stock will get smaller, the government cannot afford to keep building more houses so were are all these people going to live and work?

I generally think most people are not bothered about things until they start to affect them personally. I believe that when many people lose their job and then start to look for a job and find there are not any out there or they are very low paid they will start to feel resentment. When they see more people coming to this country and getting jobs and houses before them this could lead to anger and then civil disorder. That may sound very pessimistic, but I believe we are not far away from this situation. The Government are trying to do something about the mess Labour left this country in, but because they are in a coalition with a bunch of numbskull's they are struggling to do anything that is really going to sort out our countries situation.

In five years time the Government will not have started to pay off our national debt, that is when those who have invested in this country will see that things are never going to really change and they may well pull their investments out. Then we will be disappearing over a precipice and it will be years before we get out of it. I believe we need to be realistic, I know I sound very negative, but this is the situation our country is in. Someone needs to be honest, someone needs to help business, someone needs to stick two fingers up to European regulation which is strangling business. Someone needs to cull the QUANGO's and over paid public sector workers, someone needs to get rid of all non essential workers and focus on what a local authority is there do. Someone needs to stop immigration now, before our country sinks!! These issues need to be sorted, but unfortunately they are not going to be and those who are going to be affected the most are going to be you and me.