Britain: Not Booming But Drowning.

Despite weeks of Tory propaganda about how the recovery is underway and austerity is working the truth is that the only recovery discernible is in the London property market. Manufacturing output continues to shrink, house building is juddering to a halt, prices are still rising and income, unless you happen to be a millionaire, is still being squeezed. As the Institute for Fiscal Studies (IFS) has made absolutely clear today, income for ordinary people continues to be 6% less than it was in 2008. They also recognise that austerity will squeeze ordinary incomes even more in the next few years as benefits and tax credits are slashed. Even if the British economy was to expand at an unprecedented 5% per year we will not get back to 2008 levels until 2020. Meanwhile the criminals who crashed the banking system are still paying themselves eye-watering "bonuses" while their businesses continue to lose billions and energy executives are holding us to ransom having increased their prices by 60% in the last five years. As far as the super-wealthy are concerned there is no recovery since, for them at least, there was no recession in the first place. The Tories are not running a government, nor are they running an economy, they are conducting a war against the people that has only one goal in sight - lower taxes for themselves and their wealthy backers. As the Tory-voting electorate in Somerset are now finding out to their cost, greed and selfishness are a poor substitute for a civilised society.