Admittedly, they took us into a war that we should have avoided and Tony Blair proved to be as dislikeable as Margaret Thatcher; but arguably every government does things that the majority of voters will not agree with. Just take the current proposed austerity measures; there are few people who don't agree that something needs to happen; it's just that very few people seem to realise that what is about to happen is going to have repercussions that screw up your grandchildren's children.
George Osborne doesn't live on an estate run by a housing association, nor does he need to top up his money with child or housing benefit. regardless of what happens to the rest of the country, he'll be alright Jack...
Except... the current Tory section of the coalition are not stupid. I think many of them realise that this is it. This is the last 5 years any of them are ever going to see in power again.
I blame Labour for this. The party knew they had little or no chance of winning the general election, especially with Gordon Brown leading them. Regardless of how brilliant the man was with our economy, there was no way to fix it. And before any of you suggest that Brown was a brilliant chancellor, just dig out the copy of The Economist that suggested he was responsible for preventing a massive financial crash throughout most of Europe. He stopped Britain from being washed away in a flurry of debt and greed; well, he didn't actually stop it, he just put off the inevitable. So, when it became obvious they weren't going to hold power, or even the balance of power, they screwed it up for the new team. It's a shitty thing to do, but it's also what successive governments have constantly done; they make the incumbents' job impossible for the first few years and with a bit of luck the new government will be ousted before they make any significant changes.
Osborne inherited not just a poisoned chalice, he inherited one that was rotten to the core and probably unfixable. So what better way of dealing with it than screwing up the country to the point where whoever gets in power after the ConDems, won't be able to do a thing about it? There will be nothing left to try and fix or even try and rebuild. There won't be any money to reinstate any vital public services, without plunging the country back into the same mess its in at the moment. Once Osborne wields his axe that'll be it. It'll be goodbye to anything that resembles a public service.
He is going to systematically destroy anything that needs government money and with the private sector having zero faith in their ability to fill the void, we'll see 5million plus unemployed with no hope and no future. But that won't be the end of it: you see Cameron and co can truly believe that the private sector will fill some of the void, but whatever happens, even in the most optimistic worlds, they won't be able to fill it all. So we're going to have a lot more people trying to claim benefits and there won't be any money to pay them. How do you pay an extra 2 or 3 million people JSA or Income Support when you haven't got any money? Come to think of it, how are they going to get all those people off of DLA and Invalidity Benefits when there won't be any jobs for them to do. It's well and good saying that you want to get all those malingerers off of benefits, but they have to actually have something to do. Or are we going to see the new government reinvent things like The Youth Training Scheme or The Community Programme? You remember them (and if you don't); they didn't work. All they did was artificially take a million people off the dole so that the Tories could say how good they were.
George Osborne knows that he has an impossible task and he is acutely aware that aware that this is his once in a lifetime chance to have some power. He is also aware that this being his only chance and that he has no real way of solving the problem, so he's going to make sure whoever inherits his job won't be able to change anything. He won't even have a guilty conscience, because he's going to be okay regardless of what happens.
Now, I don't have a miracle cure. There's no point in saying, "So what would you do, Phil, if you're so bloody clever", because my cures would rankle as many people as they'd please. I would however not renew Trident; I would pull our troops out of anywhere they shouldn't be; I would employ intelligent people at the tax office to claw back all the billions of pounds that the richest people avoid paying, through one scam or another. But after that I'd be hard pressed to think of anything to cut; you see the problem is that this country needs £150billion spending on it to rebuild its infrastructure and make it a better place. I just have to accept that we're going to be the first generation for almost 70 years that will be worse off than our parents. I have to accept that the kids who are currently going to school are going to be devoid of anything by the time they leave school; devoid of jobs, money, a future and hope. I have to realise that one day very soon there won't be anything left that is supported by a government.
I have to accept that this country, whoever's in charge is so deep in the shit it might possibly never get fixed.
I have to accept that the current government are going to be the people who make this nightmare scenario a reality.
I have to accept that even though it isn't mine or your fault, that me, you, your children and your children's children are going to have to pay for it.
I have to accept the fact that many people will think I'm scaremongering and won't believe it, even when reality bites them on the arse and I'll have to accept the fact that a lot of people will also be alright Jack.
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