The State of the Nation

We've made it to March, another month of being broke, being chased by bailiffs, debtors and my mortgage company. Work doesn't pay enough or I spend too much, but one way or the other, March is going to be just the same as February (but 3 days longer) and January (but 3 degrees warmer)

2009 is nothing far removed from what was 2008, Labour are still telling us it's broken but they can fix it while allowing morale and economics to hit an all time low. We've had some new laws rushed in already and it is now illegal to photograph a member of the UK security services, armed forces or police that might lead to a breach of intelligence or help promote terrorist activity. I think that the breach of intelligence is the assumption that the British people will sit back and take much more of this crap.

It takes a lot for me to get involved in a demonstration; I have to feel real passion for a subject, but that is the problem with this country nowadays, there is no passion left. We are all just content with drifting along in what was a perfect little bubble of British security and financial wellbeing and what is now a mess of immigration policy, foreign workers, rising crime, diving morale standards and financial ruin for many people.

Gordon Brown made an impassioned speech to the US Congress on 4th March and he talked of anti-protectionism. I would agree if I thought it might be just a way for him to justify the influx of eastern European migratory workers. I agree with open borders, I agree with freedom of movement, hell, I even agree with the EU to a point, but not when either one, two or all of those freedoms of choice are compromised and my country becomes a wasteland of 'what was', building projects abandoned, businesses closing on a daily basis, unemployment rising to close to 1970s levels, and our ruling government, because that is what they are - a ruling body, not a GOVERNment at all, insisting on their regime of restrictive legislation, costing business more money than their failed economic boom years are costing now.

Keep on paying your taxes to keep the government coffers going because from a business point of view that one particular company board should take a long look at any forecast profit and loss and do something NOW to ensure it is still around to mop up the mess by year end.

We haven't had a revolution in this country for a long long time, and I for one am most certainly not advocating one now (for the record I'm not an activist, not an eco-warrior, not a political antagonist but I do think I'm a citizen of my country, and do believe in a democratic voice, do believe in the democratic process, but I do NOT believe that it is alive and well in this particular EU state). Is democracy alive and well anywhere in the EU today?

So, what has got my attention now? What compels me to put finger to keyboard and have another moan about GB Ltd, or UK PLC.

We've had the photography law changes which effectively bans anyone from carrying a camera in Central London, we've had the re-classification of Cannabis from C to B, we've prevented an EU minister, Geert Wilders from Holland, from entering the UK on grounds that he might incite a riot, homes are being repossessed, people are being thrown on the scrap heap.

We have long been saying - we, being the great unwashed, the popular majority, the great British public - for far too long that this country is too expensive. We have been riding the boom or bust gravy train thanks to the financiers running the country, and it has failed. It has rightly and royally failed us all. Our elected minority have failed the popular majority. It was never going to be boom or bust, just boom, a bit more boom, a great boom for some, a heck of a boom for a few, but overall, it was only ever going to be bust for the rest of us. That's exactly what has happened.

The vast injections of cash that we've witnessed, not just in the UK, but across the EU and US too, haven't worked. Throwing good money after bad, I think is the phrase I'd use, and all in an effort to save face, to avoid saying 'we were wrong'. Wind back the clock to the 1970s and we were in a similar position. The country's industry was in a terrible state, uneconomic and unprofitable, ready to collapse. In the 80s, the government made attempts to reform, to rationalise, to capitalise. Trim the fat and start again, but put businessmen in the place of governors, politicians, statesmen. Give capitalism a chance to flourish and the world will be a better place for everyone. That might be true if capitalism was a global ethic, but it is not.

All UK heavy industry was closed. All the mines, closed. All the shipyards, closed. All the steelworks, closed. Manufacturing, closed or sold on. The surge of call-centres during the 1990s brought some meaningless employment to some, but that was sold off to overseas 'we can do it cheaper than you' type countries. Again, the UK was too expensive.

It became so expensive that even manufacturing couldn't survive here. That should have been a sign. It probably was, but then the financiers just needed another few years to get their plans in order, get themselves to the top of the tree and retire on $m pensions and bonuses. Sod the lower ranks, those that have supported the pyramid, the public, other businesses.

I'm not saying it was pre-meditated, but hindsight is a wonderful thing. I'm not a business analyist, or financial whiz-kid, but we elected those people who are because they told us that they could make a difference, bring change from the dark years of the 70s. We believed the rhetoric. Many of us didn't understand it, but we thought they must know what they're doing and let them get on with it. Those who didn't let them get on were arrested, imprisoned, corrected!

No, not in the UK, you might be thinking, not in England, the free land of human rights and liberation. Not in my England.

Poll tax riots
Toxteth
Brixton
Coal Miners strikes
Ship yard strikes
Rise of the BNP and National Front

All throughout the 1980s there were public demonstrations of dissatisfaction. People were arrested, imprisoned and corrected.

We don't need riots, strikes or political fronts to incite either of, but we do need a sense of nationalism, irrespective of what Gordon Brown told the US congress yesterday. We need a nationial pride, (not a BNP pride but a genuine, national, proud to be British, pride).

I don't want to go back to the 1970s, it was a depressing time, and I was only 6 to 15 during that decade, but I think we need to look back to how things were run then, how things are done now, and learn the lessons of the mistakes we've made; the mistakes a succession of governments have made not just in the UK, but the wider EU and globally. Finances were seen as a way forward. London became a financial capital on a global scale. Paris, Frankfurt, New York, Tokyo, Singapore all flourished under financial targets and bonuses. Industry was 'farmed' out to less financially advanced countries and so made cheaper for the financiers to get rich from.

We live in a global world; a global economy, we're told; a global village, and I'm all in favour of commonolising the peoples of our planet while celebrating diversity of culture, but not at the price of our national pride, please.

Britain, a world leader in engineering
Britain, a world leader in auto-mechanics
Britain, a world leader in manufacturing

Britain, importer of raw materials and exporter of quality goods to the world

Our aircraft industries, shipbuilding, mining, steel; all gone
Our last remaining, one, single threaded industry was all that kept the wolf from the channel ports (and I understand they're going to reintroduce that old foe to the Scottish Highlands) and that has now collapsed.

The Bank of England has lowered interest rates
The Government has injected millions of our tax-pounds into the banking system
There are few options left, but a lot of lessons to learn.

Now, the media is full of this 'quantatitive easing' process where they effectively create new money from 'thin air'. A license to print money. Essentially, the Bank of England can purchase Government Bonds, thereby injecting funds into the system. It effectively devalues the currency but born out of the 80s and 90s business speak, quantatitive easing sounds more friendly and less risky than devaluation of the pound.

Over the past 3 decades, we have seen a steady but manageable increase in costs and earnings, until it all went wrong. Greed caused this, nothing more or less than basic human greed. We became a regulatory culture, but the regulation was aimed in the wrong places. We should have been regulating our one and only industry, rather than allowing them to regulate our lives.

It is time for the table to turn. Again, for the record, I'm not attempting to incite a riot or start a revolution, but a revolution is what is needed - turning the events of the past into a road to recovery for our future.

The people of this country are unhappy. Everyone I speak to has something to say about what is wrong. Churchill once said you can please all of the people some of the time and some of the people all of the time, but you cannot please all of the people all of the time, and that statement is so pure common sense that it should be at the head of every email our ministers send to each other. But then, it is time for some new ministers. It is time we had a rethink of what is important. Being a world leader is all well and good, but only for the right reasons.

Life is about being happy. Have we forgotten that? Life is about making others happy. Did we ever learn that? Life is about spending your 20, 30, 40, 80 or 100 years on this earth as productive for yourself and your loved ones as is humanly possible. Productive in a spiritual and personal sense, not a corporate global economy sense.

I said in a previous post, look after yourself, your partner and family, your friends, colleagues and co-workers and the rest of humanity, in that order. Do it. Work to live instead of living to work.

Scrap the various restrictive laws that have been put in place, scrap all the taxes that have been imposed unnecessarily, scrap the policy of telling people how to run their lives, and begin governing this great country, begin doing the job you were elected to do. Begin protecting the citizens of this nation and doing what is needed to make them happy to be part of this UK plc, make us proud to call ourselves British.

Scrap the council tax
Impose a fair and accountable income tax - a straight and linear tax based on earnings
Scrap all the additional mini-taxes for home owners, HIPs and so on
Allow freedom of choice for our individual lives
Stop politically rousing sound-bytes like 'British jobs for British people'. Jobs should be awarded on merit, not nationality.

Let's lead the world again. GB should be able to show the way as we used to do. GB should be able to set an example on recovery that the world can agree with, admire and follow. The first step is to have a happy population. If the people are happy the country is happy.

The police have stated that they are worried that Summer 2009 is going to be a summer of discontent here in the UK, and London in particular, but I guess all of the major cities are included here. The worry is that summer rioting might be the worst seen since the poll-tax riots and the end of the 20th Century.

For the sake of everyone in the UK, British or otherwise, please please please can the government just open their eyes and see that the electorate are fed up with you all lying, cheating and talking your way out of trouble. We are sick to the back teeth of listening to the rhetoric. We are bored to absolute misery hearing messages of hope, recovery, and apparent u-turning of opinion - again, the benefit of hindsight. We need solutions and we need immediate results now if you are ever to prove that it is worth keeping you in office.

We cannot wait 5 years, we cannot wait 5 minutes. We need fast, decisive, immediate action and we need it now, 5th March 2009.

Our businesses are collapsing. Our people are disillusioned. How long before the ultimate collapse - society? I don't want to be around when that happens.

Bring back the happiness. Allow the little pleasures in life. Lower income tax and scrap council tax. Stop regulating our lives and start regulating the business of running the country.

Let us have more of the money we earn to spend. That's the way to re inject money into the economy. British pubs are empty, devoid of any atmosphere, cold and heartless, 'clean' and 'tidy'. I'm not against that last bit, but pubs are closing hand over fist now, not in a small amount due to the cost of going out versus that of staying at home and the ban on smoking. Get a turn around of social culture, get people going back into the pub again, allow the venue owner to decide if smoking is allowed or not and provide selective legislative cover for those venues who decide to keep the ban, and see the difference.

Get rid of all this draconian legislation on restriction and control, and lift the mood of the nation overnight. Get the people on side and the rest will be much easier to accomplish.

It's the end of Q1/09, there are 3 more to go before Christmas. If they do it right, I might be able to afford clothing and food for my family and maybe, just maybe, to buy my them some presents this year.

Fingers are crossed xXx Steve xXx

My moan of the week - 14 July 2007

Damp, positively wet in places and damn expensive. That's how I'd describe the UK these days.

OK, what link you may ask. Something I was talking about with my partner last night - that's what. We get taxed on this, taxed on that, blamed for all the things wrong with the climate, smokers, drivers, industry, commerce, leisure - it's all taxed and the claims that the reasons for this tax is to 'help the environment' Blah!!!!

The earth is evolving. The population is increasing. We are belching carbon monoxide into the atmosphere at a phenominal rate. All this to live.

I'm not an earth warrior, but am becoming increasingly political as I get older, or maybe just as my country becomes more intolerable to 'live' in.

The industrial revolution took place in England almost 2 centuries ago (correct me if I'm wrong there), and we've been developing technology to 'improve' life ever since. From manufacturing and construction, to transport and leisure - all positive industries that have improved our day to day life. Technology came along to enhance each of those with computerised manufacturing, automated transportation and the world of iT in leisure. But all this is shifting the balance of nature. All these man made things are affecting the natural balance of our planet. So, the fix, as the government sees it is to tax us. Raise prices. Make it more expensive to 'enjoy' the technology that WE have invented.

Animals are evolving. You get wild animals in urban areas now. Urbanised animals are seen as 'affected by man'. We have changed this planet. We have 'destroyed' it. Hang on, haven't we improved technology to improve our lives? Why should the people of the planet be taxed for the way our governments have squandered our money in their attempt to improve our lives. Why are we blamed for advancing our existence.

Invent the internal combustion engine, then make us pay hand over fist to enjoy it. Tax the fuel to run it. Tax the purchase of the vehicle itself. Tax the use of the vehicle on the road. Tax us again to use it on specific roads (tolls). Fine us for using it when we most need to (congestion charge). Tell us when and where we may use it, how fast we may drive it - what's next - how often we may start the engine.

Not just cars of course. All motor vehicles from agriculture to aeroplanes and motorbikes to ocean liners. Taxed and taxed and taxed again, because they belch atmosphere killing gases into the air, killing us, the flora and fauna, the very planet at the same time. The fix is to tax us? What BLAH!

If we have the technology to create these things in our 21st century world, then surely we have the technology to adapt. Fuels that don't emit the damaging gases or other residue into the environment. Ways to enjoy our life as we have created it without penalty. They say leisure is the new industry, but with all this tax on everything we do, there's no money or time left to enjoy this 'leisure'.

It's a 21st century world, let's apply the technology we have gained since the industrial revolution to fix what we have destroyed and adapt to what can be changed.

Surely, we, the 21st century human race, have the ability to enjoy our existence. Use the technology we have created to better our planet. Look forward, not back. Create new. What's gone is gone, but if we have done all this and nature is no longer in control, we must replace that control with our own intervention.

Climate change is natural. We have merely enhanced it, for good or bad, but surely we have the power and knowledge, technology and ability to create the fixes we need to create. It's the 21st century. Why are we still in the dark ages when it comes to running UK PLC.