The Truth shall set you free: You cannot promise salary increases and all kinds of improvements without putting up taxes, borrowing or both borrowing and putting up taxes

 

As July 4th 2024 approaches, both of the main contenders in the UK General Election are promising cakes and promising that you can eat your cake, and that you will have the same cake after eating it. They will have to put up taxes and borrow ever more and most probably print monies in what has been known as 'quantitative easing'. 

The Unions are already making noises and saying that they will request that promises made by Shadow Chancellor Rachel Reeves are delivered. She has already spoken about salary increases in the public sector and this includes the most fundamental services like the NHS, the biggest employer in Europe and possibly the biggest employer in the world.

July 4th, 2024 happens to be Independence Day in the USA, but in Britain it might become Dependence Day if prices get out of control and people end up seeing the buying power of their income reduced. The Covid Pandemic and the energy crise generated by geopolitical decisions kicked in inflation and force the Bank of England to put up interest rates, but in spite of interest rate rises prices paid for basic items of the family basket are high and rising. How much people need to earn to have a roof over their heads? How much do they need to earn to feed themselves properly?

Funny to see on the pages of The Guardian comments about working families and pensioners as if they were part of different species. The reality is that more and more people already retired are returning to work to make ends meet and therefore they are part of working families. Most people could not possibly survive if their sole income was a pension.

UK: A cocktail of social disintegration, gender and racial politics, combined with economics means that Britain is now less stable and less safe than before

We not only look at the bigger political parties. We look at smaller political parties that are a lot more in touch with what is happening in British society. You hear the voices of those who feel increasingly threatened and unable to speak for fear of being ostracised and persecuted. Freedom of Speech comes with great danger in an environment in which blind ideology has replaced reason and dialogue.

 

Going Underground: not just numbers, but actual families

 

We are used to hear about layoffs, so used to hear about layoffs that layoffs happen all the time and we are none the wiser about how they happen or even where they happen. What is even more odd is that we are not even aware of the real repercussions of the fact that people being laid off. We are not really aware of what is going Underground, under the ground of numbers and percentages we are being flooded with.

I guess that when you enter a bank branch - of the few that remain open compared to the numbers we had just a few years ago, or when you enter a local supermarket, you don't think about how many people have simply vanished from workplaces having been replaced by automation. You might think about how difficult it is to get a job or about how little people are being paid with salaries that will never allow them to climb the housing ladder, but you don't make the connection between automation and rising dispossesion. Somebody might talk about isolation, depression, anxiety, and so forth, but we seldom see the link between employment and many of the social illnesses, mental illnesses and physical illnesses. 

Most of us build our present and think about our futures taking into account how much we earn doing what we are doing. You make plans and suddenly you get the news that you no longer have a job. You no longer have what it takes to support yourself, to pay your bills, to save for that ever elusive future that you might never have.

Like an economics teacher of mine said 'don't forget that all those numbers, those figures, those percentages, those equations and formulae are real people'. 

Europe: sign on the dots and lose your independence.

When a country gives away the right to determine its own budgets, the said country gives away its independence. Italy and Greece and others are signing because they are already bankrupt. What is more, in Italy and in Greece the decision is being made by unelected Prime Ministers. This kind of financial Treaty of Versailles will have dramatic consequences and might end up leading us in the same direction as the real Treaty of Versailles.

Look at the case of Scotland. The SNP wanted more independence from Britain. What did they ask for? The power to raise taxes in Scotland and to produce their own budgets that would only need to be approved by the Scottish Parliament.

The European process is exactly the opposite. Surrendering taxation and the right to determine budgets at a national level, European Union members will be surrendering their independence.

Now, here is the one million question: Would Alex Salmond be in favour of surrendering whatever independence Scottland now has to put it in the hands of European bureaucrats?