What has your chancellor done today to make you feel good. Well nothing. If you are a pensioner, disabled or unemployed, with the biggest fall in living standards since the 1950’s there is nothing in this budget mini statement for you. Those that are vulnerable and suffering will only suffer more and be more vulnerable.
When I work and have a roof over my head that I can afford to pay for, I never have a problem with paying taxes this is partly under the naive assumption and understanding that I hope that my taxes are going to where they need to go to and arriving in good time to make a difference to those that need them. Well they say charity begins at homes and so should taxes.
My mum is a pensioner on a fixed income and so there is no help for her in this budget. I also really can’t afford to be out of work and even though my employment is at risk in the council that I work for again due to conservative party cut backs and savings need to be made by my employer I must still aim to look after my health and stay well and keep in work as the alternative of being out of work is just not an option.
One of the key employment threads that I have seen throughout my lifetime is that if a job is important and needs doing that is not a guarantee enough to ensure that someone is willing or able to pay for that work to be done. I have worked for a wildlife charity that ran out of money to pay to it’s staff, a recycling centre that sold its remanufactured products to customers that failed to make enough profit from its works that it did that then went bust and also worked in government organisations that have been shut down due to changes in political parties in central government. None of these business, charity or government closures are in any way a measure of progress and improvement to the economy or even to society.
British capitalism is weird, incompetently wasteful and institutional corrupt. Though I Will still ironically support it over a regime in which I don’t even have a say or a vote. On the one hand we belch out huge sums of money to the monarchy for knighthoods (knighthoods to people that stand in our second house of power of government or house of lords). The house of lords still exists as it suits those in power to not have a second house that actually wields any power that would be a threat to those in the house of commons thus the status quo remains and reform does not appear to be an option, as the politicians at the top on the political right continue to line their own pockets with money exploited from the governing system as it exists with the purchasing of power and influence from those in power to those formerly holding power or in positions to financially benefit from the decisions made at the top. It’s a kind of old boys network that stinks with the smell of corruption and jobs for the boys mentality.
On a separate note the British monarchy also are people that inherit lands and earn profits off their own lands that do not deserve or require a penny from the state or from the common man or women of society and yet we fund and employee them as if our very lives depended on the patriotic cash with which is given to them from the state or the lack of taxes they pay for the resources and incomes that they earn. Our head of state is not elected; they are born into the role. Also unlike many modern European countries we do not invest in modernising infrastructure and political socioeconomic infrastructure as a given. We cut it down rather than build it up, again its easier to throw a pound in a budget statement to the queen than it is to the poor or to social and economic infrastructure projects. People will vote to spend money on the wealthy whilst spending on the poor is a vote losing issue.
Those at the top of the income pyramid continue to profit at the expense of those at the bottom. There is more chance of a person releasing themselves from this horrible and damaging system though the action of committing suicide than from earning enough money to no longer need to worry about money and get out of this socioeconomic trap that as rats we appear to run around the wheels of and face the trials and tribulations of only blaming ourselves when we fall down in a system designed to let us fail.
Do not worry I am in no way at risk of suicide myself but have born witness to many souls due to themselves seeing no way out from the chains of debt and an inability to earn money in this society due to the difficulty of holding down or even getting a job that you can do that pays the bills. Suicide of those that see no economic way out of there circumstance should be seen as politically sanctioned crime and murder and not the fault of the actual victim themselves.
I will continue to try and keep a roof over my head and work in an economy that no longer wishes to employ me with areas of work that I am able to undertake, whilst trying to keep my head above water and myself healthy and sane. Please wish me best of British luck in these weird and difficult times to live and try to exist.