by Gethin Russell-Jones
Election fever has gripped the UK. This of course is a falsehood; a ridiculous cliché. Perhaps by the time you read this it will probably all be over. A new government will have been elected by a minority of the voting population and we’ll have an elected dictatorship for the next five years.
Despite promises to cut out waste in public services, government departments will grow again and the inevitable spectre of huge tax increases looms. And no one wants to mention the experience of Ireland and Greece. Faced with financial deficits smaller than the UK, these European neighbours have embarked on savage cuts in public services.
Unemployment will rise – as will taxes – but their leaders are biting the proverbial bullet and sucking in the pain. Which is more than can be said for Labour’s Alistair Darling and the Conservatives’ George Osborne. Neither man is at ease in front of a camera and both have assiduously avoided dealing with the iceberg that HMS Great Britain is about to hit. Instead we have been given the absurd fantasy of reducing the multi-billion debt through cutting waste. Get rid of your paper clips and, hey presto, we’ll be out of this sooner than you think. Utter madness.
Everyone knows that sooner rather than later, the UK is going to have to take a huge hit in order to pay back the debt incurred after the recent financial meltdown. And lest we forget, we are in this parlous condition because global investment banks were wading in each other’s toxic debt. So here’s the rub. If God is on the side of the poor, why should they be penalized? If the ‘poor in heart’ are blessed, why should they have to bail out the captains of avarice?
These of course are moral issues, if not theological. But they will soon be practical. If front line public services are going to be slashed as per Ireland and Greece, the neediest of all will suffer. And this cannot be right. The poor should not have to pay for the rich. However, the alternative is nasty for the middle classes whose hands are also innocent of the bankers’ blood.
I’m no lover of the tax system and the prospect of coughing up more to wasteful government is galling. But someone has to pay and it’s going to be us. Every one of us. So think of those wrist bands that are sometimes worn with the inscription WWJD. What would Jesus do? I haven’t got a clue.
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