Sorry to spoil the party (what party) you know the green shoots of recovery clan who want you and I to believe that the recession is over, well it is not and we may be entering a very precarious phase where the speed of job losses rises rapidly and with that Government spending.
Remember the minute you become unemployed you’ll probably have to turn to HM Government in the hope of some form of help no matter how small. This nightmare scenario of unemployment in excess of 3.2 million will lead to a further increase in Government borrowing and with that the demise/decline of our currency for the foreseeable future. We shall be paying for the last decade well into the next and whoever the Chancellor will be after the general election they will certainly have his or her work cut out, for balancing the books will be top of the agenda and public services may well have to brace themselves for a reality check and future cuts in funding.
We actually have no option other than to cut spending and Government should be seeking reviews of where we can save money without damaging front line services. For there isn’t a local authority in the land that doesn’t waste money on bollards, guard rail, lamp-posts and speed humps. In fact this downturn could well be a golden opportunity for local Government to get its act together and start to deliver better value for money to local taxpayers. I always remember the Sun newspaper in the late 80’s and early 90’s using the letters VFM, which equated to “Value For Money”. We need this sort of thinking within our public services for the private sector is taking a massive hit and certainly bearing all the job losses at the moment, but once tax revenues begin to fall even greater pressure will be placed upon the present Chancellor (let alone a future one) to curtail spending on projects that simply don’t deliver or do not matter. It may well be time to collapse needless spending and concentrate on managing projects and departments that deliver rather than spending more money on jobs that don’t really exist or new ergonomic chairs that most do not require. In other words let the old chairs do for now
Times will be a little harder for us all but we shall not share in the pain and suffering that many people did back in the 20’s, 30’s and the post war era for this is a much more complex world and our collective standard of living within the west is very high. What people call hardship today is nothing like what people experienced many years ago, in fact we don’t really understand how good we have it in the developed world. We should spare a thought for those in the developing world and certainly the continents of Africa and Asia where they have bought into our way of life and debt management only to see the near collapse of the system we have asked them to adopt. They have much more to lose than we do for our democracy is much older and ultimately the public here will exact its revenge on failing politicians at the ballot box and not on the streets.
I may well have spoilt a party with some of these thoughts but I know I’m still better off than over 90% of the people who inhabit this planet. The trick this century will be to spread wealth across the globe and raise the living standards of all, this one goal would reduce armed conflict and certainly make the globe a better place to do business and ultimately live.
Maybe that would be something to party about ................... ?
Skate champs plan dream wedding on iceIt is a fairy tale romance of Olympic-sized proportions: China's 2010 gold medal pair skaters Zhao Hongbo and Shen Xue are getting married Saturday in front of thousands of fans -- on ice.
