David Craig, on May 19th, 2017Phew! What an exciting week it has been! We’ve had the main political parties launching their election manifestos. You can’t get much more exciting than that, can you?
And look at the enormous differences between the parties’ empty promises! It’s all so incredibly thrilling!
Still, at least there’s one certainty with today’s politicians – they all intend to borrow, borrow, borrow. The Tories propose to borrow lots more money. The Libdems (if they still exist after the election) will borrow much more than the Tories. And Labour will borrow even more than the Tories and Libdems put together. Who could have guessed that?
Assuming the Mighty May sweeps into Downing Street on a wave of public apathy, she proposes to raise �721.1bn in taxes for 2016/17 with the biggest chunk of the money coming from income tax and national insurance:
Although she’s taking in �721.1bn in taxes, thrifty Theresa plans to spend �772.8bn.
In fact, the UK government has run a budget deficit as a norm over the last 60 plus years, as expenditure is higher than tax revenue regardless of which party occupies Downing Street. The budget was last balanced in 2001/2 and has been so in only 8 of the 61 years since 1955.
Our national debt was ‘only’ around �750bn when the hopeless, financially-incontinent, economically-illiterate Gordon Brown was forced screaming and kicking out of Downing Street.
Thanks to Cameron and Osborne’s supposed ‘austerity’ our national debt is now around �1,860bn. This is equivalent to 86.6% of national income in 2016/17 or �62,000 per household. Moreover our debt is rising by about �5,170 per second. Ooops, that’s another �5,170 gone. And another. And another……..
After my book SQUANDERED was published, I wrote an article a few years ago titled something like “If I can save �50bn, why can’t Gordon?”
It’s amazing that we don’t have a single politician who remembers the warning of Dickens’s Mr Micawber.
It’s also amazing, that even though we’re borrowing over �50bn a year, we can afford things like:
– �13bn a year in foreign aid being paid directly into the offshore bank accounts of Africa’s kleptocratic rulers
– �10bn or more being paid�each year in benefits and public services to support our rapidly growing Pakladeshi population (see yesterday’s blog)
If you want some fun, you could click on the link below to watch our national debt increasing:
And the more our debt increases, the more of our taxes will be squandered just repaying the interest on that debt.
Somebody clever once said that “when something cannot go on forever, it stops”. That is also the case with government borrowing.
Eventually even governments run out of people who will lend them money at affordable rates of interest.
Don’t believe me? Just ask the Greeks or the Argies.
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