Too Little, Too Late

You can't help but flinch when reading today's headlines, no matter what walk of life you're from or what paper you happen to read. It was the day everyone was dreading. The Chancellor of the Exchequer George Osborne promised cuts and boy did he give them. Under 500,000 jobs in the public sector, gone. Retiring any time in your first life, gone. Rail fares, up again. Welfare budget, hammered as expected. Police and military funding is also down, the latter also expecting to lose all Harrier jets as well as the aircraft carrier HMS Ark Royal as part of the Strategic Security Review, also outlined this week. Double whammy for them. The next decade will probably prove to be the most trying for UK citizens, especially those already out of work or about to be made redundant, in British history.

What do these cuts hope to achieve? Well, Mr. Osborne has answers to that too. By 2015 he claims that the structural deficit will be completely eliminated, driving the UK back to prosperity and growth. Hmm. How simple it all sounds now. But that's a lot of debt to pay off. In the meantime, apparently, the private sector will just pick up all the slack in areas of the UK where the public sector will most noticeably withdraw, creating jobs and developing the areas to contribute positively to the economy.

All these boasts. So many of them. For some, being patted on the back and told that 'x will happen because I have y numbers of reassuring statistics based purely upon conjecture and optimism' is enough to convince them and keep them cosy and warm at night. A lot of the real figures, the ones that actually count, are kept behind the screen by both the government and the mainstream media to keep the panic levels down to a minimum and to keep us buying and consuming. For instance, the total UK debt, not just structural debt, stands at over £900 billion and is growing exponentially, each and every day (the interest lumped onto the debt in 2010 will stand at £42.9 million - that's for one year alone). Everyone in this entire nation, even children, owes a tidy sum of £15,365 each if the debt were equally distributed. That's enough to put anyone off the idea of buying a fancy new car, and that's even mentioning the peak oil crisis - don't get me started on that, please.

The Chancellor's belief that the private sector will be able to handle the new horde of lay-offs is stretching the boundaries of my imagination to breaking point; particularly if you take into account the fact that the private sector is doing a terrible job of opening up fresh new vacancies right now. Unemployment is already soaring, but no one is stepping in to recruit new workers. Penny pinching is already starving many businesses and industries, as people are forced by necessity to sacrifice certain luxuries to keep above the waterline (although the old trend of putting things on the credit card and forgetting about them still lives on, even after the hard lessons of 2008). I'm afraid the reality will be more companies going into administration and more jobs being lost, as well as the withdrawal of foreign investment as the UK falls off the economic radar.

Osborne's cuts are fairly tough, but they're not the healing remedy he thinks they are. It's too late for that. If I thought my generation has it bad - getting a job as a university graduate is an almost impossible ask, I now recommend anyone who asks me about university education to avoid it entirely and save themselves the debt - the next one is in for a real treat.

Sometimes, all you can do is laugh.

So it seems to me that we're in a bit of a pickle. Understatements aside, it's pretty obvious that those in Westminster and Whitehall had a superb opportunity to nip the deficit in the bud by regulating the banks and saving the pennies whilst we were in a stronger position - say, during the New Labour years - instead of encouraging spending and borrowing, letting the country soar like a 5th November firework, only to fly up, blaze for a little bit and go down with a weak fizzle. On the gunpowder note, all those wars probably didn't help a great deal, either.

Interestingly, everyone seems to hold their own opinion on what they would do to solve the problems if they were Chancellor, including myself, but it's easy for us to sit and judge by the sidelines. I for one would wish to pursue a scheme to cut needless military spending, such as the current conflict in Afghanistan and the dismantling of the UK nuclear submarine program, but halting both might cost more than just ploughing on with them, and besides, the money that would be saved would just be another drop in the ocean to what we actually owe. I can't say I'd really like to face all of the angry, redundant military personnel, either.

This is such an impossible task. George Osborne has the unenviable position of having to make harsh decisions to try and salvage as much of our comfortable, British way of life as possible. His character will forever be judged in history based on the cuts he made today, and whether or not his big gambit paid off. I can't see it going as smoothly as he predicts, but I would probably believe that had he said anything at all today.

I wish I knew the answers.