After today's #SpringStatement and the breathtaking failure to deal with the living standards crisis, many of my constituents and millions around our country will be not merely be forced to make a choice between eating and heating. They're going to be priced out of doing either.
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But this isn’t a crisis that started with today’s #springstatement Nor did it start with the invasion of Ukraine or the 2008 banking crash or the decade of austerity that followed. Instead, it started in 1979.
But this isn’t a crisis that started with today’s #springstatement Nor did it start with the invasion of Ukraine or the 2008 banking crash or the decade of austerity that followed. Instead, it started in 1979.
This is when the Thatcherite economic ‘revolution’ began. An political/economic system that has dominated for 50 years. One that even now dominates the limits of what our MSM will concede is possible.
The UK has gone further than almost anywhere else in the world - turning essential goods and services we all need into financial assets.
- That’s seen a 30% increase in costs for self-funded care since 2012.
- Rail fares rising 20% in real terms since privatisation
- Rail fares rising 20% in real terms since privatisation
- Water bills up 40% – with excess profits inflating the latter by an estimated £2.3bn a year.
- Monopoly owners of our energy grid are now achieving 40% profit margins, and pay out over £1bn a year to shareholders.
- Monopoly owners of our energy grid are now achieving 40% profit margins, and pay out over £1bn a year to shareholders.
This is the underlying cause for the cost of living crisis. It won’t be solved by a penny on income tax or a fuel cut to VAT. Not even a windfall tax would touch the sides.
- That’s seen a 30% increase in costs for self-funded care since 2012.
- Rail fares rising 20% in real terms since privatisation
- Rail fares rising 20% in real terms since privatisation
- Water bills up 40% – with excess profits inflating the latter by an estimated £2.3bn a year.
- Monopoly owners of our energy grid are now achieving 40% profit margins, and pay out over £1bn a year to shareholders.
- Monopoly owners of our energy grid are now achieving 40% profit margins, and pay out over £1bn a year to shareholders.
This is the underlying cause for the cost of living crisis. It won’t be solved by a penny on income tax or a fuel cut to VAT. Not even a windfall tax would touch the sides.
This requires systematic economic reform the likes of which was last seen in 1979. The #GreenNewDeal would be a start but even that would be dwarfed by the scale of democratic, economic & political change required to turn this around.
And deal with the climate and the myriad of other complex crisis the past 50 years have and will generate
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