The UK debt is lower than it has been several times before, after the second world war it was understandably substantially higher and this was when the NHS was born and the welfare state expanded - we could afford it then and we can afford it now. The folly is to believe the rhetoric of the Coalition Government that tells us the only way to reduce the debt is to cut public services. This is a smokescreen for what is really Tory ideology - to dismantle the welfare state. Why do we have a welfare state? Simply it is because the drain on the country resulting from poverty as recognised in the 19th and early 20th Century is a far worse scenario. Poverty creates innumerable negative consequences for us all; physical and mental ill health reduces the number of people fit to work and if necessary defend the country. Poverty affects individuals' ability to stay in education and enter professions - to earn more and contribute more to the country's coffers in taxes. Poverty weakens families and their ability to provide safe and secure lives for their children. Poverty means less money circulating in the economy and people stop spending in shops and on services from private businesses.
How will the cuts to the public sector affect Great Yarmouth?
Well, the local authority and the NHS are the biggest employers here and nationally and what they provide are the basic services we all need - schools, hospitals, social services, benefits agencies, GP surgeries and clinics, community health services, school crossing patrols, street cleaning, refuse collection the list is endless and we all take these services for granted!
Some people think that employees in the public sector earn lots of money and have big pensions, this simply isn't true; most employees earn under £20,000 per year and many are part time and female. Pensions aren't a gift - employees pay into them and if they have a low pay they end up with a paltry pension that is rarely enough to live on. All of you will know people who work for the council or the NHS - do they enjoy long holidays abroad? Do they drive expensive cars? No - like most of us, they put in long hours, above and beyond their contracts and earn a fraction of the salaries of comparable jobs in private industry.
So if this workforce is cut there will be fewer people paying for their cars to be serviced at the local garages, fewer people going to local travel agents to book holidays, fewer people paying for someone to decorate their homes, fewer people buying new furniture, having their hair done, paying for repairs to their houses, popping to the local butcher, having a meal out in a local restaurant, going to the pictures, using the gym and health clubs. The local businesses will be seriously affected and particularly those who currently have contracts with the local authority who will in turn have to lay off their employees when the work disappears.
The Coalition Government naively expects that philanthropic middle classes will replace the public sector services with voluntary work with local charities. The middle classes are the very people the Government wants to make unemployed, in other words to do the same job they are doing now but without pay - and live on what?
So as unemployment rises and less money is paid in taxes and more and more local businesses collapse, the economy is supposed to become healthier? No! It just doesn't add up.
Don't believe the hype - it's a myth that this is the way to create a fair and economically buoyant society, exactly the opposite is true. Fill the country's coffers by taxing the super-rich and recoup the money from the bankers and by creating more jobs. The welfare state is not a drain on society, it creates opportunity and fairness and is an investment in everyone's future.
Ruth Thacker.
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Ruth Thacker
stephen getliff