Why Britain Is Still In Debt.

If, as George Osborne and David Cameron claim, the British economy is now recovering and if, as they also claim, the deficit is falling then why is Britain's national debt continuing to mount? In 2008 the national debt stood at £530 billion but is now standing at £1.7 trillion. Why? Well to begin with the deficit is the difference between what Britain produces and what Britain spends. So, even if the deficit is falling, the national debt can continue to grow - spending more than you make even if you reduce that spending will still put you further into debt. Yet if we are making more, as the so-called "recovery" takes hold, and spending less, especially on social services, why is the national debt three times what it was in 2008 and still climbing? The answer is in two parts. First the much-vaunted "recovery" is nothing of the kind with much of it based upon a rise in property values which feed into the GDP figures. These rises are mere illusion and are based on nothing more substantial than what people believe property is worth. It's not as if houses in this country have suddenly become more productive or increased their efficiency - they remain simply bricks and mortar. Osborne and Cameron have also used an economic sleight of hand to bolster their claims to a "recovery" by fiddling the figures and including estimates on the value of the black economy - such things as prostitution, drug dealing and money laundering. Yet the suffering caused by cuts to spending on social services - unemployment and sickness benefits and the the so-called "Extra Bedroom Subsidy" - have been very real and so too, you would think, would be the effect on the national debt. So, where has all the money "saved" gone? Much of it has gone into subsidising business through working tax credits as wages continue to fall. In other words we, the taxpayers, have been paying ourselves so that the rich and greedy don't have to. A great deal of it has gone on "quantative easing" - the new socialism for bankers which rewards them for being rich and greedy and also for being utterly stupid. Much of it has gone in the form of tax breaks for the rich and greedy so they will come to Britain and be as rich and greedy as they like. In other words a great deal of Britain's GDP has been transferred from the poor to the rich by circuitous and devious routes and we taxpayers, too poor to actually give the rich loads of ready cash, have effectively been forced to borrow the money in order to give it to them. To add insult to injury the people we've been forced to borrow the money from are the very bankers who got us into this mess in the first place. And that, ladies and gentlemen, is why Britain is still up to its neck in debt, why you and I have been forced to foot the bill and also how the Tories have turned socialism on its head.

Austerity Successfully Creates Need For More Austerity.

Rather than the budget surplus that George Osborne confidently predicted would be the result of his austerity policy it would seem that he has, instead, handed the country a £20 billion black hole in the public finances. The reason for this is quite easy to understand - if you're not a Tory that is. Austerity has reduced demand in the economy which has, in turn, delayed any economic recovery. Without an economic recovery the deficit cannot be reduced which is why Osborne has managed to increase the national debt to £1.4 trillion - more than all the governments combined in the last 100 years. His reaction to this disastrous news is to announce that austerity, the policy that is wrecking the economy, will now be extended to 2020. What then of the recovery that Osborne tells us is in full swing? He is able to claim this by telling three little porkies. First he has chosen to calculate the deficit by manipulating the real figures, using the "cyclically adjusted deficit" figure instead of the actual deficit. This miraculously "reduces" the deficit from £111bn to £85 billion. Second he is using the artificially inflated property market which feeds into the GDP figures to show an increase in financial activity. Third he is using Iain Duncan Smith's pogrom against the sick, disabled and unemployed and the zero-hour contract economy to reduce the apparent unemployment figures. Not only is the so-called recovery a cynical fiction so is the reduction of our debts. Our entire economy is being deliberately undermined for purely ideological and entirely selfish reasons. Osborne is simply trying to shrink the state so that he and his rich pals can have a nice juicy tax cut. Greed, which underpins neoliberal economic theory, was supposed to create greater economic activity and, through "trickle down", benefit us all. Instead it has become a goal in its own right while any supposed benefits for the rest of us have been abandoned. Put simply there is nothing is this for you and me, except for poverty, shrinking services and despair.

National Debt Soars To Level Of Last Tory Government.

All the evidence now available shows quite clearly that George Osborne's insane austerity drive is literally killing the country. Shrinking wages, cost-of-living rises, the theft and fencing of national assets to criminal corporate gangs, the blackmail of greedy bankers, tax evasion by the rich, greedy and selfish, the deliberate pauperisation of the vast majority and the persecution of the sick and disabled have delivered only mounting debt. In fact the national debt now stands at the highest level since 1989 - "coincidentally" the last time that the Tory party unleashed their primitive and barbaric ideology on the economy. The reason for this totally predictable outcome - predictable to everyone except the insane Tory party - is the reduction in demand that austerity brings. In the past reducing demand have been used to cool an overheating economy while no one in their right mind would do so to further cool an economy experiencing the equivalent of an ice age. This is not economics, it is madness and only a party driven collectively insane by their own greed, selfishness and idiotic ideology would even contemplate it. The economy needs a stimulus not a general anaesthetic, a shot in the arm not its life blood deliberately being drained away. The Tories are not only destroying the economy in an act of pure vandalism, they are demanding that ordinary hardworking people should not only bear the brunt but, as Esther McVey told us only a couple of days ago, should be prepared to starve to achieve the Tory wet dream of returning us to the 19th century.

Heads They Win, Tails We Lose.

The coalition government has become rather fond of claiming that they have brought down the deficit and that their austerity programme is working. The truth is that this is an outright lie. Britain's national debt is rising faster than any other European country. In five years the Labour government borrowed £319 billion. In the two-and-a-half years since the coalition came to power they have managed to borrow £465 billion - a stagering increase by a factor of three. If this is not shocking enough the way that money is being used, or rather abused, is even more disturbing. The number of homeless families being accomodated in Bed and Breakfast establishments has increased by 44%, the number of people receiving emergency food aid from charities has doubled, many teachers are now buying food for their pupils even as the number of breakfast clubs declines at an alarming rate and the number of young people now out of work has risen by a frightening 168%. That is the cost of the Tory-led assault on the ordinary people of this country while things are set to get worse as benefit cuts begin to bite and energy and food prices rocket upwards. And what are our MP's talking about as the Tories pursue the hopeless goal of lowering spending to fund tax cuts for the rich? The proposal that their pay should increase by over 40% to "compensate" them for a potential loss in their pension rights. Compensated? They should all be beaten with sticks.