Why the cuts are Necessary, a layman's guide.

Ok, quick explanation of why all the government cuts are necessary, very much in layman's terms

I am leaving out GDP, as that figure has nothing to do with government income and only has any point if tax was at 100%

Lets look at a family, they are comfortably off and earn £51,400 per year after tax.

They have been spending too much on credit cards though so owe £77,100 (this is 20% more than they earn) to credit cards and don't have a mortgage or house to secure these on, so there is nothing to sell to repay them other than the items they have purchased them selves (which will have dropped in value, or been consumed). This is 151% of what they earn each year - so if they spend every penny just on paying off debt, didn't eat or pay rent it would still take 1.5 years to pay off!

Because of their lifestyle, they are giving money to their elderly parents who have no pension or savings so are having to pay it out of current funds.

With all of this they are spending £66,900 each year, dispute their already heavy debt. Which means they are spending £15,500 more each year than they earn (that's a 20% increase in their debt just the next year), and as interest rises on the debt, this will go up with out increasing spending any more.

here's those figures in a more succinct format.

£51,400 Income

£66,900 Expenditure (120% of income)

£77,100 Current debt (151% of annual income)

£15,500 annual increase in debt (20% of debt)

If a family was in this condition, they would be expected to go bankrupt as they would not be given any more loans and wouldn't be able to cover the debt.

Change those numbers from thousands to billions and that was the state of the country at the end of 2010, and it has gotten worse since.

If the UK goes bankrupt, no other country will trade with us - we rely on imports for most of our food and no longer really have a manufacturing base. That would instantly make us a third world country begging to survive. There would be no pensions, no retirement, no benefits and no NHS - and that is the only alternative to cuts! (The Thatcher government dealt with the last massive public debt by selling off all our utilities, we don't really have anything left to sell).

So what I ask is - is it worth putting up with cuts for a few years while we get this sorted, or would your rather face the alternative?

A Goverment in Denial

It has been a while since I have had time to write - life can be like that sometimes, but the news of recent days and a small amount of free time has given me cause to speak out.

Again Gordon Brown shows he has no ability to accept a reality that all evidence shows is almost diametrically opposed to his own deluded beliefs.


Helicopters

Again Senior Army Officers, that are working in the field in Afghanistan have complained about a lack of helicopters - in one case with the officer dying in an attack almost identical to the kind he described in a memo stating the problem. Yet despite this, our Prime Minister insists that we have plenty of helicopters in the field. Maybe he should try saying that to the grieving relatives of soldiers that have time in administrative transportation operations. i.e. soldiers moving to another base, not performing combat operations.

As Tony Blair found out a few months ago, they are accountable in the public's eyes.

Drugs Tzar

To show that this desire to ignore all evidence that may be contrary to their desires they have asked their Drugs Tzar to resign, why - because they claim he is not able to give impartial advice. What they mean is that the advice (which is backed up by lots of scientific research) doesn't follow the policy's they want to impose on the population.

You might think, well they will be gone soon, and then things will be better, but the comment from the Tory party over the drugs Tzar, wasn't in defence of his scientifically backed up comments, but that the government had taken too long to get rid of him, and they should have done it the first time he made a comment they didn't agree with.


The Conservatives

The Tory's are currently claiming to be the Original Liberal Democrats, but their message is neither Liberal or Democratic.

With the Tory's in power, the privatisation of the infrastructure for another of our vital services is inevitable - they have already stated that they will privatise Royal Mail and not even the Americans have gone that far. Will they never learn that privatising the front end is ok, but as our lack of development in the communications sector has shown, if the infrastructure is privatised, necessary work to develop better technology and keep pace with the rest of the world will not occur due to cost.

The best we can currently hope for is a hung parliament, with the Liberal Democrats holding the swing vote, as I fear a Conservative Government will just continue the spiral a greater divide between the haves and the have nots.

Road users hit again.

Once again the government has hit rural community and the transportation industry. From midnight tonight petrol duty goes up by 2p per litre, but that is before they add VAT on top of the already charged duty (they get you twice) which at the current rate of 15% makes it 2.3p per litre.

At the end of the year, VAT will go back to 17.5% so we will be hit again, this is the third raise in 9 months. Road Hauliers have had a huge increase in insolvency's due to the combination of the recession and excessive fuel bills.

Even environmental campaigners are complaining this time, stating that most people have cut road use down as far as they can with out improved public transport - but fuel duty goes in the general tax pot, helping to pay the vast sums involved in unwanted projects like the National ID Card. In fact fuel duty hurts public transport as they have to pay for the fuel, at the same rate.

This causes real problems for people in rural community, where on the whole salary's are lower and having a car to travel to the shops (which can be 20+ miles away) is essential. Having already seen to the closure of a large quantity of rural post offices, being able to get to the nearest town is essential.

Rail does not provide an affordable alternative, as I show below:

To drive my car to London costs about £35, leaving when I want. If I want to park in central london, at an NCP I can for say £20 for the day and another £6 gets me a one day travel card. Total cost £61, and an increase of £6 per added person. if I take 4 people it only costs £22 per person, including the travel card, and we can travel when we want (it costs £16 per person if we park further out for free and get the tube in)

If I want to travel before 9.00am the cost per person is £126 with the £6 for the one day travel card applying, so £132 PER PERSON! not only that, but you have to change trains and travel when the trains run.

The Liberal Democrats want to cut down on road use, but we want to do this by improving and lowering the costs of public transport, making it a cheaper and viable option vs the car. Not only that but we want to increase the ability of the rail system to transport bicycles so you have the option to take your bike and use it at the other end.

Both the Conservative and Labour governments have hugely increased the cost of fuel using road users to fund expensive government projects, and there are no signs that the Conservatives plan to reverse this trend. The only party with a well reasoned policy are the Liberal Democrats - we just have to hope that they get enough of the vote next year to do some good.

You can help with this, Vote Liberal Democrat at the next election - If everybody who thought, "I would vote for them but they wont win" did, and if everybody who thought "they are all the same" gives us the chance to prove them wrong, then we have the opportunity to win by a landslide!

Do your bit for the future of Britain, Vote Liberal Democrat.

When is enough enough?

I have just read a new report about and incident in London.

link

The police's comment at the end shows that they no longer regard stop and search as anti terrorist powers but part of every day policing. Searching people for no reason other than targets or the fact the officer feels like it is bad enough, but in this case the targets of the stop and search were children.

The spiralling abuse of these powers shows the result of what happens when you give people broad unregulated powers. The Labour government has already stated that it's policy is to wait till the horse has bolted before locking the stable door when the Home Secretary said that they would regulated the abuse of the police car tracking system (using every cctv camera in the country) when it happened. With little concern for the fact that it it has already happened by that point.

This attitude has been prevalent with the current government, providing more and more power with little or no regulation.

The Magistrates Association is up in arms at government plans to give police the power to give instant fines (3 points and a criminal conviction on you record) for 'Dangerous Driving' allowing them to be both jury and sentencer. What constitutes dangerous driving can vary widely, and be effected by the mood and attitude. This will have 2 side effects, more fines will be given out as it saves the police the time and paperwork of going to court and people will end up with a criminal conviction with out realising it. In court you can get as much as a £5000 fine and 9 points, so for the worst cases they will be too lenient, and for milder cases they will be too strict.

Link

The government has plans for another 21 offences to be dealt with in this way, but they have been delayed for further consultation - something the government has a habit of ignoring anyway if it goes against their plans.

Paul Holmes the Liberal Democrat home affairs spokesman pointed out that

"The police have been given wide-ranging powers without adequate debate."

Note that it is the Liberal Democrats commenting not the Conservatives, who them selves have been frequently known to increase police power rather than curtail it.

This is becoming a serious issue as Britain becomes more and more a police state, we can only hope that the Liberal Democrats are successful enough at the next election to have some say in fixing the situation.

Distroyed Data and Swine Flu

This morning has brought 2 issues, More deaths due to the misdiagnosis of Swine Flu and the Police wanting more control over our information.

The news of a mother who died from meningitis when it was misdiagnosed as swine flu over the phone is another tragic example of the state the current has gotten the NHS in to. Where under trained staff man phones, and pretty much everything is classed as swine flu.

The result of this is people are told not to leave their home and too avoid contact with others, this has caused several deaths, with one sixteen year old dying from Tonsillitis, something that I have not heard of killing anyone in the UK in recent years. Now rather than seeing a doctor the NHS has been gotten in to the state where you call a call centre and someone reads questions and diagnosis off the screen, the same way you would with IT support. I have never found this worked particularly well in IT, so I doubt it performs in health issues either.

After a comment in an American paper saying if he was British and used the NHS he would have died, Dr Stephen Hawkin spoke out saying he has received most of his medical support on the NHS - I wonder if he would get the same level of service today he did then, or whether we would loose one of the worlds most brilliant minds.

A shake up of the funding and structure of the NHS is desperately required, not just with the IT budget the way the Conservatives suggest but across the board, the Conservatives put accountants in charge rather than doctors and this has caused a huge degradation of the system, what is needed is a hybrid where you have mangers dealing with the business issues at the behest of doctors rather than telling the doctors that more cleaning staff would cost too much money and the occasional case of MRSA is a reasonable risk when offset against the cost. Tell that to the patients who's lives are ruined by it.

Also in the news is a piece of software that causes data on the internet to 'self destruct' after a specific period of time, after which no one can recover it.

The Police don't like this, note I said Police not the security services, the Police are supposed to be there to protect us, but more and more this comes from limiting our freedoms and keeping us under close surveillance. The assumption is we are guilty till we prove to them otherwise.

The comment from a police forensics expert is that it that data should work like the police being able to enter a persons home and search. If this is the case though I can shred or burn any correspondence I don't want others to see so Vanish would actually be supplying what he is asking for (somthing I doubt anyone has pointed out to him).

The more we become reliant on the internet and data, the more we need the ability to protect our selves, not just from 'Over enthusiastic policing' but from hackers and criminals wanting to use this against us.

Should the Liberal Democrats get in to power, privacy and human rights are high on the agenda, not only with plans to protect the privacy of the individual, and to implement a permanent right to privacy in a bill of rights, but increasing the rights of the victim rather than the criminal.

The world we are heading towards is a very scary place where our every movement is monitored by the government in case we do something wrong, the Liberal Democrats will not only move direction away from this, by try and prevent future governments from heading in that direction again, giving us what I see as our only chance to keep Britain as a free nation.

Peter Mandelson, Spying and Students

Not a good start to the week from the government, Whilst the Prime Minister is at his Fife constituency desperately trying to avoid getting kicked out at the next election, Peter Mandelson is supposedly running the country from Corfu via blackberry . . . . (Note that Peter Mandelson is not currently an MP and not elected, another of New Labours knocks against democracy with the large increase in unelected officials in the cabinet)

Independent Article

Chris Huhne has pointed out the frightening levels of government surveillance, with over 1500 surveillance requests made every day last year - an very few of them relating to Anti Terrorism, the excuse for bringing the said laws in. I have already posted at length about this and no doubt will again, but Chris brings the points well enough now -even using on of my favourite statements about it, that George Orwell's 1984 was supposed to be a warning, not a blueprint.

BBC Article

What I really want to get my teeth in to this morning is the student situation, a report from Scotland shows a climate of spiralling debt for students, meaning most students from poorer family's have to work well over the recommended 10 hours maximum per week, with student loans, commercial loans and credit card debts leaving them in a terrifying financial situation, and one that had a direct impact on their ability to study (how do you study well when you are exhausted and cant stop thinking about your financial problems). This means lower grades and less chance of getting a good job that will help to pay off the debt.

BBC Article

The governments plans to solve falling attendance from poorer family's, not by reducing the financial strain, but by reducing the grades required by poorer students by 2 grades. This will just cause a two tier system in the university's and lead to resentment from student that had to study harder to get in - adding to the problems rather than resolving any.

And then to add insult to injury they are talking about limiting the number of multiple occupancy houses allowed in any one area so that finding a shared house will be harder for students (and anyone else who need to share due to being unable to afford the extortionate levels of rent at the moment - a problem that is on the increase and means there is a need for more shared housing not less). As shared accommodation becomes less plentiful it means that those still able to provide it will be able to charge a premium, putting yet more strain on student finances.

BBC Article

The government claims to understand there is an issue with rental costs in the country, but it seems that they are intent to throw petrol on the fire rather than to put it out. A policy we are seeing appear with frightening frequency across all levels of government policy.

What we need is a clear national constitution, setting out people's rights, Who is eligible to take what office in government, and what level of surveillance is allowable for national security with out infringing on people right to some level of privacy.

Along with the a consultation and rework of the electoral system in the UK, setting fixed terms amongst other things (something that will stop governments from calling elections when it is convenient for their position in the polls) the Liberal Democrats will also add a Bill of Rights to the British Legislation, something we have never had and something that will curtail all governments to come.

The Scottish Assembly is looking at the student situation, but this is something that needs to be done nationally. Though there is not the money in the economy to do all we would like at the moment, cutting back on the 12 Billion IT expenditure that the government has started, and that is spiralling out of control, over budget and is currently 5 years late in some cases (and that recent research shows has had no positive effect on government efficiency, in fact government efficiency is getting worse not better) and improving the military procurement system will put some money in the budget.

We will strive diligently to improve the finances of the worst off, unlike the current government and work for a fairer society for all. Unlike the Conservatives, and now New Labour (as Mandelsons holiday shows) we do not rely on big business for our funding, that is both our greatest strength (as we do not have to try and appease them with policy) and our greatest weakness (as we are always low on funds, and do not have enough money to stand in every constituency at times). We are funded by the people we represent, so we can centre our policy on their requirements with out having to pander to our sponsors desires or loose them.

If the Liberal Democrats get in we can offer real change. Though there is a strong feeling that all politicians are the same, there have only been two parties in power in living memory, Labour and the Conservatives, and in their current forms they are hard to distinguish from each other. If every voter that wasn't vote Liberal Democrat because they think we can't win we would have a good chance, if every voter that dosn't vote because they think we are all the same, was to give us the change to prove them wrong (what have they got to loose, if they are wrong and we are different then they have gained if they are wrong nothing changes) we would win by a landslide.

I call on all voters to bear this in mind, give us a chance, get behind us rather than splitting to various small independents or "special interest" parties, then you will have a chance to see real change, positive and lasting change and a change that will set Britain up to move forward in the 21st century as a shining example of what can be done buy the people that the rest of the world can follow!

What has become of our Society.

Reading the news today, I saw one of the saddest articles I have seen for one time. It was sad not just because it was reporting the death of a young man, but because his neighbours had heard him screaming for help and not one had gone to check what the problem was.

He had gotten stuck in a drain returning home, and yelled and screamed, his neighbours assumed it was a drunken game and ignored it - as a result the man lost his life. It is a sad example of what has become of our society, where young women are recomended to call fire rather than help or rape, as people will come to watch a fire and will ignore the other two.

The last 2 governments (Labour and Conservative) have created an attitude of "I'm all right mate" with in society, where everyone is more interested in watching their neighbours to report for some reason or another rather than helping each other. This is a trend we need to reverse, where people go to help someone in need rather than ignore it, or worse stand and watch.

I wish I could provide some fall proof plan that would cause society to change overnight, but that is not possible, fixing this mess is going to take years of work from successive governments that are prepared to look at and deal with the issue. I cannot see either the Conservatives or the Labour Party doing this.

Our best hope is a hung parliament at the next election, giving the Liberal Democrats some say in the governing of the country.

I call to every person that reads this, to talk about it with your friends. If every voter that didn't vote Liberal Democrat because they doing thing we can win voted for us, we would be in a good position to go in to opposition, if not rule. If every person that didn't vote because they think all politicians are the same, gave us a chance and voted for us - we would have a landslide victory.

Not all politicians are the same, but in living memory only 2 parties have run Britain, The Conservatives and the Labour Party. So talk to your friends, relatives and co-workers and give us a chance to prove you wrong and proved that there can be honesty and democracy in government.