The UK's going down
Unless it gets out, Scotland's going down with it
Published in the October 16th edition of The National and the October 17th edition of The Edinburgh Evening News.
At least Starmer’s English Labour has been honest. It has repeatedly said who they are and what they planned to do in office, so we shouldn’t be shocked at what’s transpired since July.
Rachel Reeves boasted that her economic plan had big business’ fingerprints all over it.
That’s why she’s genuflecting to the City of London, the world’s dirty money laundromat that contributes nothing of value to the UK, rather than ordering the government’s own bank to create the money needed to protect and enhance people’s wellbeing.
Her ‘fiscal rules’ are invented to justify cutting spending and investment which harms everyone but especially the most vulnerable. The UK has had seven different sets of fiscal rules since 2010, the onset of austerity. Do you think there’s a correlation?
Now Starmer vows to bin regulations to “rip out the bureaucracy that blocks investment,” but will instead strip more protections from consumers, workers and the environment. Does Sir Keir recall the Grenfell towering inferno,
the Post Office/Horizon scandal,
the 2008 financial crisis,
or shit-filled English waterways?
To bring investment up to the level of its major competitors, the UK would have to spend £100 billion a year for several years. But rather than revive the moribund economy with badly needed public investment in health, education, housing, transport and energy that would attract private investment into these areas, Starmer’s foolishly chasing foreign behemoths like Amazon, Google, Goldman Sachs, JP Morgan, P&O, Blackstone, BlackRock and Macquarie which loaded Thames Water with unsustainable debts.
All are experts at asset stripping and rent extraction, as if the ailing UK economy needed more of what has been destroying it since the 1980s. It’s insane to think they’ll deliver good jobs and self-sustaining growth. English Labour seem intent on eviscerating what little remains of the UK’s shrinking asset base by flogging it to these vulture capitalists who are laughing all the way to the bank.
The UK’s going down. Unless we get out, Scotland’s going down with it.
The video that Hetty Wilson provided a link to is well worth watching all the way through even if you don‘t fully understand it: it’s just as important for you to realise that UK Gov’t record keeping and accounts presentation are utterly chaotic and deliberately set out to obfuscate the real facts and to confuse anyone (expert or otherwise) attempting to make sense of the numbers.
You might well ask why do they allow this? Well some of the record-keeping goes back a very long way, pre-dating company law and accounting standards. Add in the UK’s resistance to change and its predilection with secrecy and tradition and you can see how this might happen, but not why it does. Then there’s the London factor: not just as the centre of governance, but (just as importantly) as the centre of finance. The City of London Corporation has enormous powers protected by Statute (e.g. the "Liberties and Customs" of the City of London are guaranteed in Magna Carta's clause IX, which remains in statute) and even has its own police force. Thatcher’s policy of making Finance the major contributor to UK finance has made the City of London the biggest and easily most influential factor in the UK economy. It has been THE major player in facilitating and normalising off-shore banking, which has led to massive tax evasion, as well as the creation of Special Economic Zones, which threaten to do likewise. It has also fought against many aspects of financial regulation.
In other words it suits the City of London and all who wish to profit from it to keep UK National accounting as confusing and impenetrable as possible.
As Richard Murphy states a limited company couldn’t get away with presenting such bewildering accounts and tardy accounts.
To make matters worse, we have a Scottish administration that is happy to co-operate with the Labour government's plans to ramp up the asset stripping.