What We Saved For With Austerity Cuts
With the near certainty With austerity the hot topic of a ‘new’ Conservative government, lets look at what cuts bought us first time round and the way it impacts people on a day-to-day basis
The Things We can(‘t) Afford
The economy is a bizarre thing. The word alone is as useful as a magic spell is to a movie franchise superhero. It’s brought into action by politicians and pundits to justify everything from the atrocious to the strange. Stick on a channel, any channel, and you’ll very often hear—we simply can’t afford adequate (one week) foodbank stocks right now. We just don’t have the money. Healthcare, justice, policing, and education have been wrung-dry for over the last decade for…
Late Decisions
If we’ve learnt anything at all from modern news coverage, it’s that we’re unable, or at least unwilling to engage with anything at all unless it’s compressed and simplified into the format of dull sports journalism. At least that is the commonly held belief of every major media outlet and political commentator in the country today. Leave vs Remain, Left Vs Right, Cummings Vs Sense, Masks Vs Freedom, Lockdown Vs the herd. Even a biological pandemic is a political hot…
Philosophical Differences
When pressed for a reason why it’s worth bothering to vote, you’d find it hard to do better than the response and aftermath of the emerging COVID crisis. If there was ever a cure to the mass apathy and voter lethargy brought on by successive elections then it could be easily found in contrasting responses to the 2020 pandemic. “They’re all as bad as each other” and “it doesn’t matter which one you vote for” are sentiments being proven false…
Woeful Response
It would be useful to know how close to home a lesson has to be to learn anything from it at all. Does a near-crash prevent you from speeding in the future? What if it happens to the car in front or the one behind? Does near-death illness prevent drinking, smoking, or drugs? We now know China is too far from home, too remote, and too different to apply lessons learnt from the outbreak to our reaction here. With over…
Building Our Own Disasters
The government has a literal never-ending list of things to do. When they go on summer and winter break, it’s not because the country has been ‘sorted’ and all the work of governing is done with for the time being. Within their, typically four day week, members often handle evergreen topics such as education, health, employment, business, and international relations. Occasionally members debate urgent crises such as the climate change emergency or acute disasters. Most sane individuals recognise that tackling…