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Sonia Price
Features Writer
3:00 AM 7th May 2022
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Opinion

It’s The Economy Stupid - But That’s Just The Start Of It

 
Photo by Nico Smit on Unsplash
Photo by Nico Smit on Unsplash
I failed O-level maths twice but even I know Rishi Sunak and Boris Johnson and the very best economists on the planet are categorically not going to revive Britain from the sickness that has consumed it.

You see the problem with Britain isn’t just that we’re in hock to too many 00000s to fit this article. It’s that our political pilots have been in the clouds and happy with themselves, their posse and in some cases their mistresses for too long. Too many of them are removed from the ‘kitchen table’ conundrums that face an ordinary family trying to balance a budget.

Photo by Donna Spearman on Unsplash
Photo by Donna Spearman on Unsplash
The reality that in Britain today there are more food banks than branches of McDonalds is an embarrassment and an outright dereliction of the role of a government to safeguard the most fundamental needs of its citizens. In February 2021 there were more than 2,200 food banks in the UK according to research shared by Parliament. This is just one area where our Government is limp-cocked - not the most politically correct description I grant you but as long as our political leaders are - metaphorically speaking - impotent in addressing injustices that its citizens should not be enduring in this age I will avail myself of the language as I see fit.

Another area is irresponsible gambling controls. Disordered gambling has the highest suicide rate among all addictions with 1 in 5 problem gamblers attempting suicide. Although my bank has the technology to identify and alert me if I have gone £1.50 outside of my agreed overdraft within minutes; gambling operators - surely some of the most technically sophisticated and aggressive promoters out there - have the real-time data to facilitate and even encourage an addict as he/she gambles a month’s wages over the course of a weekend without any intervention. Over to you Oliver Dowden or whichever minister now has the tawdry task of defending the worst practices of our gambling industry!

Image: Pixabay
Image: Pixabay
Specious arguments tell us that people have free will and agency of their choices. I am not sure that someone in the grip of any kind of addiction has free will, but that’s the ‘quality’ of debate our most expensively educated politicians are trained to advance. Of course we all know it’s because there’s just too much money tied up in it. It’s like it’s a case of never mind that - what have you got at 4.30 at Kempton?

The ‘respectability’ and legitimacy that the extremely wealthy and privileged has basked in is, to my mind, warped as I fundamentally believe that wealth and opportunity ought to be distributed throughout a polity. I know it can never be fairly, just better than it is now. I addressed this in a light-hearted earlier article for this news site titled: Are We Really Doing Our Level Best?

The consequences of regarding human beings as mere tools to profit from needs to be called out. I know that this is the fundamental premise of capitalism, and provided it is periodically tweaked to meet changes in society it is the system we will continue to live by. But the cracks are showing. A healthy system of fair competition, opportunities for gainful and secure employment throughout the country underpinned by decent affordable rents and mortgages, access to financial services for those who have none - and a respectable income for those who cannot hope or expect to be employed are the starting points of levelling up. But when I talk about it many people just glaze over. Why do so many of us buy into this idea that it is more than we should expect and more than we can afford it?

Listen up at the back Ministers - we need a root and branch re-think of the value of a human being’s time and experience here on Earth. That’s not the value of humans calculated as units of production for the benefit of corporations. It’s a very big idea but it’s an idea whose time has come. I firmly believe that until the individual is meaningfully enfranchised into the system Britain will continue to sicken.

Image: joenomias on Pixabay
Image: joenomias on Pixabay
The consequences of being on the wrong side of this divide are depressing indeed. Take the obesity epidemic. Obesity rates among adults in the UK have almost quadrupled in the last 25 years, and now 25% of adults fall into this category. We’re not looking good or feeling it. Don’t try to tell me that this has nothing to do with living in an unfair and an unhopeful system. I am convinced it is. My reckoning is that we wouldn’t have to look far to find links between the lowest earners and poor health outcomes directly linked to a sense of hopelessness and depression.

Alcoholism, food addiction, drugs, out of control gambling and a general lack of self-preservation start in the mind. Britain indeed has a disease of the human spirit and, in my opinion, at its core is our basic disregard for our fellow man and too many of us being accepting of, and in thrall to extreme greed. I am not talking about you featherweight millionaires out there I am talking about the uber rich.

Whilst we are on this theme it would be disingenuous not to give attention to how the advance of Artificial Intelligence will impact on you and your neighbours’ health, wealth, ability to relate to one another, happiness and sense of purpose in this changing world.

There is another elephant in the room - the one with the metaverse headset on. Is this just another pacifier for an expanding (in every sense) class of people who are economically immobilised? They may never be able to afford to go to the Shangri-la that is Molakai (when I went there in the 1990s so heart stoppingly beautiful it was hard to believe it was on this earth) but at least they can ‘experience’ Hawaii via the metaverse.

Stars of the think tanks - whatever they are - all you philosophers who are capable of envisioning an adjusted way of living, all you Christians who can see that we have deviated from God’s path in the name of greed and turned his house into a den of thieves step up. You’re hired, we need you more than ever.

Because capitalism in it’s current form is fuelling pernicious divides. In the excellent - my opinion again - but you’re free to it, Renegade Productions documentary Four Horsemen of The Apocalypse the intellectual Noam Chomsky laments that the divides are now so great that the rich and the poor are almost a different species in their shared touchstones and experiences.

Boris Johnson’s latest solution to this problem is the just-in-time sticking plaster to sell off already depleted social housing stock. It seems in facing the cost of living crisis Boris asks himself: What would Margaret Thatcher Do? These are different times with greater challenges and fewer options.

The excellent David Byrne of Talking Heads wrote a song called “Something Ain’t Right” and Keir Starmer and his marketing team would do well to deploy it in their campaigning. Something definitely ain’t right when the only doctor you have half a chance of getting on the phone is a spin doctor. In the advertising business there is a maxim that knocking your opponent doesn’t work but I think sometimes you have to rip up the rule book.

In my perspicacious, correct and humble opinion Britain does not need only need a brilliant accountant to revive the spirit and hopes of the nation. It needs a miracle, a shaman and a collective beating heart. What it needs is some decent, clever people who aren’t afraid to ask for tax from those oligarchs and billionaires who are so nifty at hiding it offshore. It needs people who care more about people than they do about creating a nice balance sheet. “Never mind the deaths - and there will be deaths - look how I have balanced the books”.

You’re missing the point Mr Chancellor but unless you were challenged with making dinner out of the contents of what’s in my fridge right now you couldn’t possibly understand. But it’s going to take more than a lass from up North to convince you. Perhaps the Archbishop of Canterbury Justin Welby feels something like I do and he might have a word in your ear over a glass of Dom Perignon and a slice millionaires’ shortbread.

Image Bru-nO on Pixabay
Image Bru-nO on Pixabay
You see these cuts aren’t going to hurt this particular class of people. It isn’t right that people are getting thrown onto the street whilst the metaphorical battle ship on the Monopoly board bemoans (my battleship goes to fancy restaurants and can talk) the fact that people in their rental properties bought to burnish their personal pension portfolios, in towns and communities they may never have even visited, can’t be counted on to pay their rent.

It’s very abstract for those insulated by their millions and very real for a man spending his first night in a sleeping bag in a shop doorway. My friend in Harrogate tells me this is a regular sight as she makes her way home from her restaurant job where she is on a zero hour contract working all hours to pay for someone else’s mortgage.

Image: Stevepb on Pixabay
Image: Stevepb on Pixabay
I can’t help thinking the wallet would losen or we’d dare to prize out the taxes of the stupendously rich from their offshore accounts when it started to effect the physical and mental health, the security of their homes and the education of our Establishment’s offspring. I think we would soon see some motivation, some adjustments in the law and ingenuity at that point. Perhaps there’s a few million between the cushions of your couch Rishi?