I should warn you now, this is going to be an extremely political blog post, in which I shall highlight why I believe the current coalition government to be doing the right thing in terms of the country's finances. I realise that this statement will make most people immediately switch off, or desire to bombard me with abuse, but all I ask is that you read the whole of this post with an open mind and see that what I'm saying actually makes a lot of sense. I'll keep it as short as I possibly can while highlighting all the points necessary to illustrate my argument. However much you disagree with it, I urge you to read it all the way through and not just dismiss is as rubbish because it's not what you want to hear.
Firstly, I would like to make something very clear. Even though I am about as middle-class as you'd expect from anyone living in inner-Surrey, one of the most Conservative areas in Great Britain, I'm putting my bias aside in order to speak the truth about what really is best for this country. Well, here goes, into the deep end.
The timing of this post (id est immediately after the protest march through London yesterday) is not a coincidence. One event during the march in particular which alarmed me was how the protesters booed Ed Miliband when he spoke about how some cuts would be necessary. Honestly, I don't usually agree with Ed Miliband on principle (I mean, have you seen that thick expression he's always wearing?) you know the government are doing something right when the opposition agrees (as is the case here - sort of: I'll go into more detail there in a bit.) The fact that the protesters booed at this just shows how selfish and ignorant we are, if we expect that the government can just magic up a load of money from thin air just so the outrageous spending spree held by the previous government can continue. I mean, Labour themselves admit that it was wrong to spend so much borrowed money, and that that level of spending can't continue, so the only way to stop that is to make cuts or raise taxes. The huge amount of money being poured into the public sector may well have been great for a few individual people (and Labour's popularity) but it's just not a feasible way for a country to prosper. It only leads to huge debts (like the ones we're seeing now) which have to be paid off, with interest. We have to raise that money somewhere, which even the culprits admit. The current government is only trying to clean up the mess the last one left behind.
To all those who argue that the cuts could have been put into place more gradually, instead of a big wallop immediately, have you no understanding of how the interest system works? The longer you leave debts, the more the interest builds up, and if you put cuts into place gradually you end up making the cuts for a far longer time, which means potentially a longer time of fewer jobs, less money being put into public services et cetera, which in the overall scheme of things is arguably worse for our country's economy. Think of it in a smaller scale. Say you have a credit card, for which you have to pay interest on anything bought on it. Do you spend a fortune on it, knowing full well you're not going to be able to pay it back? Not if you have anything between your ears. Why should it be any different for a country? The only real difference is that the scale is much larger, and therefore the damage is much greater. You know it makes sense.
Another important point is on pay rises. Now, I live close to the University of Surrey, where there have been strikes over pay rises for the majority of the last week. On Monday, when I was on the bus home (yes, inner-Surrey snobby Lowri uses public transport,) I saw a sign attached to a pole by the main university entrance which said "A 0.4% payrise is an insult" which, if I'm honest, made me wonder what people who thought like that are doing in a university in the first place. I actually felt rather tempted to return the next day and change it so it said "A 0.4% payrise is still more than you were earning before, so be grateful." I don't understand how the academics can be complaining about being given more money? Pay rises didn't ought to be seen as an entitlement, they should be seen as a privilege, and besides which, compared to a lot of workers, academics (who are responsible for the uproar in Surrey, at least) are actually paid rather well. This just further illustrates how selfish we (the UK) have become.
It should also be pointed out that the definition of happy is when things get better for said person. Likewise, unhappy is when things are worse for said person and you're more neutral when things stay the same. By definition, the population will only be happy when the government keep on pouring money into public services, which just isn't feasible. Whether we like it or not, cuts are necessary in order to reduce borrowing from other countries and pay back the debt, so the spending can start up again in the future. In introducing cuts, by definition there will be an unhappy demographic, who think the cuts should be somewhere else. It's like a domino effect.
My final, and perhaps most important point, is a reminder of what politics is all about. Getting the voter (us) to vote for you at the next election. And how does one do that? By spending in all the right places, not implementing cuts, and just generally making oneself popular. The current government are definitely not doing that. They are, quite simply, making themselves unpopular for the reason that they genuinely believe that what they're doing is right for our country. Why would any political party (or coalition) intentionally sabotage themselves for the next election?
In conclusion, and leading on from my last point, I think the best thing we can do in light of the cuts is to trust the government in what they're doing, after all, they may be politicians, but they're politicians who are willing to sacrifice their own popularity for the sake of our country (and popularity is everything to a politician,) and take pay cuts themselves (as the cabinet did at the start of their term.) In fact, protest marches are the least productive thing we could possibly do. After all, these marches tend to end up with shops/banks/et cetera being ransacked, work days being wasted when they could be generating revenue for the country, and such a degree of mob psychology that no one will listen to reason, instead of just being angry. It is for this reason that I wrote this blog post, to be a voice of reason when no one else is willing to step up and talk some sense.
Thank you for reading this blog post all the way to the end, I hope it at least made you think a bit more about how we can't just expect money to appear out of nowhere.
Lowri
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