I had big plans for pt 2 of this blog today, but as it happens I have little time to do some proper research and bestow you with awesome facts and figures. The reason for this is, much like a lovely repeat of this time last year, our flat is without internet while we swap providers. Despite us now clearly being the future (albeit a possibly dystopian one) this simple swapping of ISP to ISP seems to take a near millennia and so our flat is back swimming around in the 1980’s with only books and actual real things to do instead. I have rebelled against this forced disconnection from the world and have upped and taken myself to the local Starbucks only to remember exactly why I gave up doing this pretty much a year ago. Muswell Hill’s Starbucks seems to be perpetually full of dicks of such a magnitude that even supping a gingerbread latte is not enough to distract me from feeling anger at there insistence on being consistently the most annoying people on earth. Today I am surrounded by some foreign exchange or perhaps international students who are so constantly excited to see each other that squeaky noises are released regularly of a high pitched nature to the extent that I’m concerned the building may become surrounded by bats and dogs.
Anyway, persist I shall, and onto the main crux of this piece we go with occasional moments for me to sigh in disdain at another wave of hands in the air at someone they only saw two minutes ago. Today George Osborne delivered an autumn statement that was far more of a mini budget of the type the government said they’d stop doing several months ago. The kick in the balls to all public sector workers today was an announcement that there would be a 1% two year cap on any pay rise, whilst simultaneously saying that there would be more substantial job losses in the same field. Essentially there was another ‘fuck you’ to everyone in the public sector, ensuring that their job wages won’t reflect inflation making it harder to live, if they have a job at all. The government appears to have swiftly gone from yesterday’s notion of trying to prevent the strikes to mooning at all unionists with the words ‘strike that you bitches’ across their cheeks.
Someone argued on Twitter that people’s life expectancy has risen and so why should the country pay for those people’s now extended retirement, when they should be working longer to balance it out. My ill informed answer to this would be that yes, people’s life expectancy has gone up and perhaps the pension age should rise. However, until it does or until some agreeable solution can be found, the pensions those people’s do receive shouldn’t be so poor that their life expectancy drops down to its previous tally. Public sector workers, above all others, do work for the public. So if the public doesn’t pay for their well being, then who does? The private sector has and will never have any interest in doing so because its competition for them, so for us to expect public services, we have to pay for them. Once someone has worked a lifetime in the field of public services, it seems only fair that tax money continues to pay for them. I honestly don’t see how you could disagree with this or why it’s so difficult to understand for some.
Like I said yesterday, everyone should pay towards this deficit, but with many business men and banks avoiding doing so, it shouldn’t affect the working people’s lives by making them pay for it instead. Osborne also announced today that the UK’s growth would be lower than forecast, and unemployment would be higher. It has been all over the paper’s today that there is a ‘financial black hole’ in the public sector of £30bn and growing, and yes, it does need to be dealt with, but by making cuts like this, it will only make it worse. Ultimately people with lower salaries will pay lower taxes and those who are unemployed won’t be paying tax at all and be in need of more benefits. It just doesn’t seem to work on any level.
Anyway, I am bad at explaining all this, and am struggling to even attempt humour about it all. So have a read of this instead. It’s concise and makes sense unlike many of the government’s motives. If after that you still think people shouldn’t go on strike tomorrow or don’t see the point, then there is no hope and I look forward to singing ‘I told you so’ and dancing circles around you when the UK looks more and more like a failing country.
http://falseeconomy.org.uk/cure/the-false-economy-guide-to-the-deficit
