The Conservatives led by David Cameron, achieved a majority in the 2015 General Election. They continued with their disasterous austerity policies which stripped £billions from local economies all over the UK. £billions were cut from benefits payments and £billions were cut from local authority budgets. The plan, like its creators, was simple enough, cut back to save money and reduce the deficit. Unfortunately, the deficit continued to rise and in 2017 the policy was abandoned. Nor a single penny was “saved”, but huge damage was done, you don’t cut £billions from your economy and expect it to grow, but obviously someone forgot to teach basic economics at £40,000 a year Eton. The Eton boys had failed spectacularly.
So austerity laid the foundations for the Cost of Living Crisis, and the policies of another old Etonion, Boris Johnson built the massive edifice that is today the UK’s £2.4 trillion National Debt. Together, Sunak and Johnson locked down the economy of the UK, in the full knowledge that it woud destroy hundreds of thousands of small businesses and create the conditions for massive inflation. “But, but, that is unfair” some say, “they were fighting a once in a lifetime pandemic”. Sure they were, but so was Sweden, so was Japan and so were many of the States in America. The difference was, those countries and States saw the folly of halting economic activity overnight, our “bright boys” obviously thought they knew better. Yet, the facts were available to them at the time of lockdown; the average age of death was 83 and the over 80’s had a 95% survival rate. The UK policy had always been to protect the vulnerable, but that policy was thrown out and a completely new, untried or tested policy, LOCKDOWN took its place. To make matters, much, much worse, our then Chancellor of the Exchequer Rishi Sunak approved a massive program of Quantitiative Easing by the Bank of England creating from thin air £450 billion which was injected DIRECTLY into the UK economy, a policy long known to cause rapid, uncontrolled inflation. Total, absolute, insanity.
So now we’re paying the price of high inflation (officially, 10.1% CPI) which is sure to rise following an 80% increase in energy costs come October, then to be followed by another large increase in January. Cameron, May and Johnson have a lot to answer for here. They stopped the building of onshore wind power and stopped subsidies for domestic solar panels, and that was absolutely the cause of our energy problems today. You see, if a majority of homeowners had solar panels on their roofs, they could expect to pay half of what they’re looking at in 2023. If those onshore wind farms had been built, we would have lots more electricity available to the grid. But, according to this trio of numpties, onshore solar farms are an “eyesore” and domestic solar takes profit from centralised power suppliers. We could also be well into completing new nuclear power plants. Not one iota of thought for the actual majority of people in this country who need cheap energy. And to add insult to injury, MP’s who sit in Parliament are allowed to claim their energy bill payments on their expenses. I am sick and tired of hearing about millions of “green jobs”. The last time we had subsidies for solar power and water heating, the rug was pulled from small businesses operating in the sector and 50,000 jobs were lost practically overnight. Yes, it’s undeniable, the Conservatives have a lot to answer for.