13th November 2010
It can be quite intriguing to find where a few comments on Facebook may lead. For me a brief discussion on a Channel Four documentary about Britain’s debt and the way it came across as propaganda led me to watch the film on YouTube and discover for myself the state the UK is in and the commentary from mainly old Conservatives about the crisis they believed was created by the Labour government. There was even an illustration of how the bank bailout was quite minimal compared to the over spending the last government carried out. About 53% of the UK’s spend was on the Public Sector. Far less than what China spends. In fact, we were given interviews with Hong Kong business men to demonstrate how free things were in the old colony and how everyone paid less tax and could make loads of money. Then we visited old Communist countries that had been liberated by Capitalism enabling our nearer neighbours to prosper better than we are. Yes, we are in quite a mess. A mess that even our great, great, great, great grandchildren and their offspring will still be paying for over the next few centuries, or more. To illustrate the debt £50 was placed on the ground, being just 0.11mm thick so that effectively £500 would equal 1mm. The estimate of how high Britain’s debt was stacked up to, the programme claimed, was about 6,500 miles.
Now, that is not true.
If £50 note is 0.11 mm then
£500 equals 1.1cm
£50,000 equals 1.1 metres
£5,000,000 equals 1.1 kilometres
1 mile = 1.609344 km
so
£7,315,200 = 1 mile
£4.8 trillion in short form (i.e. 1 with 12 zeros behind it instead of the older 18) = 656,167 miles
That is: £4,800,000,000,000/7,315,200 = 656,167 miles
NOT 6,561 miles as the programme indicated.
Let’s put this into proper perspective. The Moon is 238,855 miles from the Earth, so the last £50 note would require a spacecraft to fly out 2.75 times the distance of the Moon.
So the full horror of how much debt the UK is in was not truly indicated. Most people spoken to in the programme had no idea of how much debt the country was in. The emphasis was placed on how the public sector was effectively sponging of the private sector and not actually generating any income for the economy. Though most of the frontline workers, such as firemen, nurse, doctors, police and teachers only accounted for a fraction of the total expenditure it can be seen that this is an area where people will begin to lose their jobs.
Recently, I asked a classroom of 16 – 17 year olds how many of them had jobs. Three years ago out of 20, 18 would have put their hands up. Now only 2 hands went up. When asked how many were looking for work, the remaining 18 thrust their hands in the air. With rising fees for students many are wondering if they can afford to go on to do a degree, especially as fees in the UK are going up to around £7,000 per year, £21,000 for a 3 year course. Then the student would have living expenses. At £250 a month for rent they would need a further £6,750 for rent (based on 9 months rental) and a further £3,780 for food based on £7 a day for the same period. This comes to a grand total of £31,530 of debt, not including any socialising or provisions for clothing and shoes.
In Ireland, Universities are now asking for all A*s for GSC ‘A’ levels that most cannot consider going south of the border. With only two major universities in the Northern Ireland, our teenage population is being driven to England, Scotland or Wales to seek higher educational opportunities.
In Northern Ireland the Public Sector is expecting to have a budget cut of £4 billion, spread across the next four years, exactly the same as in Scotland, which is home to some 6 million people. In Northern Ireland the population is just 1.5 million, so we are going to be hit with nearly 4 times the cuts per person to that of Scotland.
Most people I know want to be able to earn a good living, so they can afford to buy a home, have a car and pay their bills. All, no matter how much they earn, struggle with the constant increase in bills. Most prices have become inflated over the past couple of years but no one has seen their wages rise to the same degree. Many find an increase in paperwork associated with their jobs and with mergers occurring across the board, less opportunities arise for colleagues to talk face to face to solve problems. People I have spoken to in a range of different workplaces find themselves rushed and exhausted, with hardly a chance to sit down and plan things through. This takes time but a good plan leads to success. We cannot keep on firefighting.
But, perhaps, that is the point. If we have not time to think about what we are trying to do ourselves, with no time to talk to others, then we will not have the time to think about what is going on around us. Or the time to calculate how much the cost of all that is happening in the world will have on our households.
Is this the work of the thought police? For 62 years, has anything changed? Was George Orwell right in his analysis of the world back in 1948 when he wrote his last novel? One of the joys of YouTube was a discovery I made of a 1954 BBC production of ’1984′ which you can see below. Careful though. We can’t have anyone supporting Emmanuel Goldstein. Just remember, we are just the proletariat.
Buy the book on Amazon: 1984
To watch the Channel Four documentary click here:
Britain’s Trillion Pound Horror Story
