1 Growth of debt. While they allowed the banks to roar forward with profits, and rip off everyone with false banking "products", they went on a massive spending spree with no idea how to pay it back.
And it is not stopping, it will reach £1.4 trillion very soon.
They also permitted everyone of us to reach levels of personal indebtedness (mortgages and credit cards) never seen before.
Now we have to pay for both.
2 Excessive spending on Social Protection. How can anyone ever think that a country that has most of its business in bank gambling and service industries, pay for huge amounts of social spending? And on top pay for ridiculous public sector jobs like "Diversity Officers" on £50000 a year?
And what is the result? That people no longer take responsibility for their own well being, enterprise falls, will to work falls. Everyone becomes despondent and has to live in this Labour misery.
Look at the chart. We spend more on the interest on our public debts than we spend on Transport, Industry and the Environment. Now I can see that we need to curb the transport, we simply don't have the energy resources to support it, but we need to spend much more on Industry and Environment: both BIG job creators and real wealth earners.
This is the misery we have now to face, and will face for the next 10 years as we drag ourselves out of the mess.
By the way here are some of the numbers for 2009/10:
Income totals £498bn
Tax 140, Soc Sec 95, VAT 67, Excise 44, Corp Tax 34, Council Tax 25, Biz Rates 24, Other 68
Spending totals £675bn
Social 219, Health 119, Education 88, Defence 38, Order 36, Housing 30, Debt 30, Trans 23, Indust 21, Other 72
Difference = 675-498 = £178bn or 26% of government expenditure.
Cuts
There will have to be deep, real cuts in spending from 2011-2015, bigger than every before seen, we will all suffer. By 2015 cuts will have to be £46bn/year - that equals 10p of basic tax or, after ring-fencing things like the NHS, Education, Foreign Aid, cuts of 25% in everything else, like Social Protection, Defence, Transport, Public Order and worst of all Industry.
It will hurt. It will mean re-thinking what the role of the state must be. For example
- the public sector should do only what the private cannot
- public services should be devolved as close to people as possible
- real power to the front line.
A more efficient, less meddlesome state.
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