There’s one thing that prime minister Cameron got right
during his speech to the City - the need for a “fundamental culture change”,
because the UK economy is diving deeper into debt in a bid by the ConDems to
engineer a mini-boom.
Cameron is now promising a continuing assault on public
spending, and a permanent reduction in the size of the public sector, whilst
drawing as many people as he can into a life of permanent debt servitude as the
ConDems pump up house price inflation.
Imagining what that might add up to isn’t going to cheer up
anyone who uses health, education, social services, or anyone dependent on
benefits. But as the BBC has been investigating, it’ll be a
roll-over bonanza for companies like Serco, Virgin Care and Circle competing
for the rapidly expanding marketplace in privatised service provision.
In Wales ,
it’s not the future that looks grim, but immediately now, this winter. Huge Westminster imposed cuts on
budgets have dramatically reduced health and local government spending.
The announcement from local health board Hywel Dda, covering
Pembrokeshire, Cardiganshire and Carmarthenshire, that it will cancel elective
surgical procedures from November 22 throughout the winter period has sent
shock waves throughout the country. Local councils throughout Wales are also
hard at work on plans to slash the services they provide.
Many are claiming that the new turn in Cameron’s speech, when
the economy is supposedly “returning to growth”, proves that the attack on
living standards is driven by “ideology” rather than necessity. This is clearly not the case.
Despite Cameron’s proud claim to have reduced the government's budget
deficit by a third, only last week the European Commission forecast that Britain 's
current account deficit – trade in goods and services – will rise to 4.4% of GDP in 2014, with little
improvement after that.
This is the highest trade deficit of any major industrial
country, and far higher than the US, as its exploitation of shale makes moves the world’s richest country towards
energy independence.
The Commission said Britain still has a structural government
budget deficit of 5.7% of GDP even after years of austerity. This compares to
minus 1.5% in the eurozone, minus 0.8% in Italy, and a surplus of 0.5% in
Germany.
So-called growth in the UK economy is being driven by a
steady fall in the household savings rate, down to 6.2% this year from 7.3% in
2010. The Commission said it expects UK consumers to "dip into their
savings" to cover spending. "The debt burden of households remains a
distinct risk to private consumption."
Clearly, the UK economy is living not just on borrowing but
borrowed time.
The pressure from the ongoing global economic crisis of
capitalism continues to bear down on the UK
as it does on the rest of Europe .
Their jobs were sacrificed to demands from the Troika - the European
Commission, the European Central Bank and the International Monetary Fund - for
2,000 public sector job cuts by last June.
Now the Troika wants to see a further 15,000 jobs go by 2015
in the budget to be finalised next week, adding to the 27% unemployment rate,
and giving no hope at all to the close to 60% of unemployed young people.
Misery for the majority throughout Europe
and the rest of the world is certain to increase as corporate control of the
democratic process tightens its grip. Talks delayed by the shut-down of the US government have begun between the EU and the US on
TAFTA, a transatlantic free trade agreement. This is intended to remove
regulatory barriers impeding the growth of the big global corporations.
What’s needed is a different kind of culture change from the
one envisaged by Cameron. Or, as Bob Dylan put it ‘"There must be some way
out of here" said the joker to the thief "There's too much confusion."’
Global, democratic, not-for-profit alternatives anyone?
Gerry Gold
Economics editor
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