Chapter One So What Happened?
©GeraldineBanksJune2024
OK I admit it , we had it pretty good. I’ve always had an economic option or “a job and prospects” as some people like to call it. But all that has really worn very thin in the UK. I suppose I’ve noticed it over the last 20 years or so this feeling of being left behind or being totally overwhelmed and I don’t think I’m the only one.
I intend this book to be a best seller, it won’t solve all your problems but it will help you to help yourself(my last chapter) Not in a free market Liz sort of way ;but in practical terms with the tools ,legislation and government that still exist despite the free marketeers .(see Chapter 12 if you want solutions without the back story, but you’ll miss so much fun, because the story is quite incredible )
In the meantime, for those who would like to know. How did we get ourselves in the vaguely United Kingdom into this unequal, unholy mess?
Was it the Global Economy? Was it America’s fault? Was it class wars, or lack of class wars? Was it immigration? Laziness of the working classes (assuming classes still exist) or just lack of interest by the average voter in the system? Was it devolution or no devolution? The expense of setting up Scottish and Welsh assemblies and the inevitable nursing of the Northern Ireland assembly to re-establish itself and be run by Peace Loving Politicians.(We can only hope)
The cost of this Government Hierarchy to the Public Purse is phenomenal and it doesn’t stop there. We still have an ancient Parliamentary system with heaven knows what costs and expenses to keep it going. The building itself is needing eye watering amounts spent on it just to meet fairly basic health and safety requirements. An awful lot of hot air is debated and fine wines and beer drunk. It’s a time and motion nightmare, and to most of the population who are not professional politicians, irrelevant.
We also have Public Inquiries which cost an absolute fortune to run and generally keep Kings Counsel’s, Retired Judges, Barristers and their associated administration staff, busy with a full-time job for on average 3-5 years. It would be cheap of me to say jobs for the boys and girls.
With very little redress to the protagonists, currently it’s the Horizon Scandal, a few years back it was The Grenfell Inquiry. For some reason the NHS Blood Scandal didn’t get a full inquiry. Not to ignore the immense Human Cost of these Scandal’s and Events which lift the lid on Gross Inadequacies and Corruption of past events. The money from Public Funds ( enough to run a Medium to Large Sized manufacturing Company for five years )is spent looking at what has gone wrong and the truth comes out in a lawyerly fashion.
These enquiries produce nothing except evidence for Compensation Claims, which though thoroughly deserving, in many cases come too little to late for the people involved. The same applies to the endless committees run by the Government, with parties from all sides acting like a Court , but with no power to actually do anything. It’s embarrassing for the Executives of Thames Water to be questioned over “water leaks and sewage but it doesn’t actually stop them from doing the damage. And there is the rub , ladies and gentlemen.
We are a nation of evidence gatherers and pointer outers. In my younger days there were no student loans. If you got the necessary grades you got your tertiary education because that was what the Government wanted ( Not now it seems, they want young people to do National Service, bit of a turnaround that). Students’ digs were not expensive, the tuition fees were paid for by the government. The government of the people wanted more tertiary educated people, and they got them.
Those tertiary educated people have been the ones in positions of power now for the last thirty years or so. They grew up expecting things to be free for them and for them to be entitled as long as they performed intellectually and proved themselves academically.
On the whole, with the big prizes of promotions and titles in sight, they lost their moral compass and started making judgements on others who did not tick as many academic boxes as them. Ticking boxes became a lifeline to those who quickly became out of their depth even with their perceived intellectual prowess as the world changed and changed very quickly. Enter Bill Gates, Google and Steve Jobs. Suddenly there was loads of money and embracing technology was the way to get it.
To be honest, these “Baby Boomers” couldn’t have helped themselves .Latin verbs versus an Excel spreadsheet. Latin verbs may have bugged them, but they didn’t have bugs in them. (Yes , I have been watching the Post Office Horizon Scandal on You-Tube) and the people involved in that , some are claiming that they could barely work a computer , how were they supposed to know what a bug was? Indeed why were they Senior Managers?
Human nature is what it is. After buying their first house and being in the upper quartile of earners and perhaps having a second home and three foreign holidays a year and being recognised as leaders of the proletariat.
Their lives became invested in responding to the demands of those who were above them( whoever they are, more of that later) and what those above them said they wanted .Efficiency and reduced costs.
Well, no one is going to give all those perks up lightly or even argue for the Keynesian view that actually building a road to help infrastructure and productivity for the greater good is worthwhile.
The Greater Good went out the window. No ,if one person can do the work of four and robots can replace people, then productivity will be increased at a lower cost, what a wonderful model, and my boss will be impressed with me and my workers will be able to afford to buy my house from me and I will move up the housing ladder ,maybe buy myself some land. Meanwhile ,my workers will be mortgaged to the hilt and will have to do overtime to pay for it.
This selfish attitude is what SKU’d the economy. Yet in every area of life it is our business model. Bill Gates was a dog eats dog sort of businessman. Excel has never really worked well, it’s a sales managers tool largely used to compare performance and costs .
Steve Jobs was more interested in the Arts, Graphics and Music side of life, and I’m grateful for his products, but hell they cost the earth and then Google,( my preferred Search Engine), has decided it wants me to pay for storage, controls my access to news and wants me to watch endless advertisements. Steve Jobs is probably self-rotating in his grave wondering where things went wrong.
thenotsomightyom 