What A Sad Little Empire Britain Has Become -- Janine di Giovanni, Daily Beast Already choked by austerity, Britain released its 2013 budget this week to howls of outrage. Janine di Giovanni talks to the struggling citizens of dreary, depressed London.
Cyprus may be falling to pieces. Greece, Spain, and Portugal may be going down the tubes, too. But England is not far behind.
The embattled George Osborne, Chancellor of the Exchequer, is probably the most loathed man in Britain today—next to Tony Blair, who celebrated the anniversary of his greatest mistake, the invasion of Iraq, earlier this week. Osborne released his dreaded 2013 budget on Wednesday (the ludicrously named United Nations “International Day of Happiness”), calling it a plan for “those who aspire.”
Aspire to what? London today is a grim shadow of itself, one of the most expensive cities in the world. The kingdom’s economy, ravaged by austerity, has stalled—according to The Economist, “It needs structural reform; looser money and more infrastructure spending.” Single mothers, average earners, small businesses, and job seekers are really struggling.
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My Comment: High taxes. Bureaucratic paperwork and red tape that would make a Soviet commissar look efficient in comparison. Massive debts to sustain a social network that can no longer sustain itself. I can list a hundred reasons on why Britain has declined .... and they would all hit home. But the British people voted for this type of society and system decades ago .... and continued to vote in the politicians who sustained it. But now .... those who paid the bill in the past do not want to pay it anymore .... in short .... the money has dried up.