Riots!

stien

In Response to Re: Riots!:

In Response to Re: Riots! : +1 stien,  Financial Armagedon springs to mind, o yeah, did not our so-called finance & budget experts, [Brown & co], sell half our Gold reserves at rock bottom price, this would nearly have solved this current prob for UK!!!! On a More serious note, there is a riot in ma front room, The Hitwife has looted ma wallet, & ran off with the laptop!!!
Posted by HITMAN_RV

Hitman your not wrong about Browns gold sell off, this was calculated in 2007 as a £2 billion mess up, with golds rise since then say £4bn not much more than the £3bn the Tories chucked away on Black Wednesday, but these figures are tiny.

Under the Labour government spending rose from £317 billion in 1997 to £671 billion in 2009 but its income in 09 was only £494bn, that's why they were planning to borrow £175bn that year. For scale total income tax from everyone in the UK for 09 was expected at the time to be £141bn.

The NHS budget rose from £34bn in 1997 to £119bn in 2009 24% of government income

The education budget rose from £29bn in 1997 to £88bn in 2009 17% of government income

NHS, education and social protection spending combined were £396bn in 2009 – 80% of total government income. That's how they were creating jobs, more and more were working for the government, 1.25m in the NHS alone, the contracting private sector could never pay the bill.

This was spend, spend, spend on a colossal scale, the bankers got the blame and sure they screwed up big time but it was the tax income from these banks that was supporting government tax income and consumer spending from house price rises and borrowing that was supporting the high street, when both collapsed the whole house of cards came tumbling down. Its taken a couple of years but the evidence that the UK and indeed the whole western world is sliding into oblivion is before our eyes now.

Unfortunately since the new lot came in nothing has been done to reverse the borrowing, their limited spending cuts are about as useful as nailing a plank of wood on the side of the Titanic and just like the Titanic the UK is sinking. They know that if they did what is required there would be civil unrest that would make the current riots look like a mothers meeting. Imagine cutting the NHS budget by 40% the 1m plus workers would be seriously unhappy and many would be ex NHS staff.

The scary thing is that because we are in so much debt there is very little any government can do right now.

On a lighter note I hope you got your laptop back, I guess the cash has gone for good.