The 2012 Budget and why millionaires shouldn’t be running the country....

The budget we got here in the UK yesterday was nothing I wasn’t expecting, so I didn’t get as angry as many people did.  What George Osborne did to the pensioners is terrible, but what he did to the fuel duty was just as bad.....worse maybe for them, as the elderly had a double whammy with that as well as everything else.

I won’t bore you all with the details; sufficed to say if you’re from the poor, working or middle classes in the UK then you’re going to be facing poverty (if you’re not suffering it already).  But if you’re earning over £500k a year then its smiles all the way to the bank, as Osborne made sure that the wealthy got.....well, wealthier.

Many of the poorer classes are now saying, with Osborne also adding that people my age (46) and younger will have to work until we’re seventy (and possibly older – even to eighty), then why don’t the government just reintroduce the workhouses and have done with it.  Reading the details of the Budget left out of Osborne’s speech, but printed in full on the internet, you cannot help but see their point and secretly agree with them.

I honestly think the trouble with the current crop of parliamentary front benchers – across all the parties – is that they’re all millionaires; and not even ones that have worked their way up into that income.  No, these are men who were born with a whole set of silver cutlery in their mouths, let alone a spoon.

They were educated privately and in, of course, the very best of schools – such as Eton for the likes of George Osborne and David Cameron – before going to Harrow and then onto universities like Oxford and Cambridge. 

They never once had to struggle with a mortgage or rent, course fees, grocery costs, fuel costs, car costs and heating costs to name only a few of the ways we have to spend our money daily to survive.  They never had to choose whether to put the heating on to keep warm or feed themselves.  Never had to decide to skip meals themselves to ensure their children were fed; or tell their children that the dog/cat was being taken to a rescue centre because they couldn’t afford to keep it.

So to be told that there are people, both elderly and families, across the UK who are doing all this just goes over their heads; they honestly don’t understand what all the fuss is about.  Osborne’s reaction this morning to the vitriolic and bitter media headlines was a classic example – he seemed genuinely perplexed that people didn’t think taking money from the poor and giving it to the rich was a good thing, as he felt it would “kick start the economy”. 

Of course it won’t; a few more millionaires becoming billionaires won’t get enough money spent in the UK to get us out of the crippling recession.  But the general population spending even less will certainly keep the recession plodding on for another year at least, if not longer.

 

Of course what finally ‘marked his card’ for many political pundits and the viewing public, was the little smirk he developed towards the end of each interview; as if he was explaining a perfectly simple idea to some very stupid children.  It seemed a case of we were to be indulged by having it explained to us, but in reality our opinions didn’t really matter.

And, although they argued today against the budget, New Labour isn’t any different – a lot of the ideas Osborne has put into practice since the LibDemCon coalition took power was first floated by New Labour, so that really proves they’re not any better than the rest; again because many of them are so wealthy and out of touch with the rest of population.

I’d go so far as to say the British government are, quite literally, as equally clueless about the general population of the UK as Marie Antoinette was of the people of France.

The reason she said “they have no bread?  Well, let them eat cake” was because she truly felt that cake was easier and cheaper to buy than bread, as it was always so plentiful in her many palaces.  Of course such a flippant response to the abject suffering of the French people ended very badly for her.

Osborne is no different, as are the rest of the front benchers of parties like the Liberal Democrats and New Labour; all are so wealthy that they truly believe that if we can’t afford bread then why don’t we just eat cake?

However, I think it will end the same way for them as it did for the last Queen of France – she lost her head for her cruelly ignorant remark.  By losing their parliamentary seats at the next general election I have no doubt that Osborne, Cameron, Clegg and Co. will be doing the same – after all, to behave as they have in this last budget shows that their brains are certainly not in their heads; so by losing their seats.....well, you get the picture.

Of course the thing that is worrying me a lot – bearing all this in mind – is who the hell do we vote for next time?  If the world is run by fools, do you choose an idiot instead?

This is Simi; thanks for reading......