Take It All

David Cameron touched the third rail of British politics in April 2009 with his address to the Tory Party entitled 'The Age Of Austerity' in which called for his fellow conservatives vow to cut spending in order to pay down the debt incurred by the Welfare State. Pension programs, clean water, and cheap housing were to be slashed from the budget once he seized power with the help of the Murdoch news machine. The Tories failed to win an all-out mandate, but the Liberal Party abandoned Labor to form a match plotted in the back rooms of Parliament. Austerity as opposed to prosperity became the rule of the nation and the government slashed services in concert with raising taxes. The British reacted with riots this summer, which the newspapers and government portrayed as looters and arsonists. The majority of the citizenry bought the explanation since the majority of the rioters appeared to have a race definition of 'other than white'. My favorite pinball machine in the 70s was SLASH. It had nothing to do with the guitarist from Guns N Roses. Slashing the budget has led the UK onto the slope of double-dip recession and David Cameron has turned to Chancellor George Osbourne to save the economy. Today his financial wizard will announce that his ministry will seek to attract billions of pounds to finance various infrastructure projects throughout the nation to provide jobs. His prediction of 30 billion pound sterling has been based on having the banks ravage the pension funds to support the austerity state. The government ante into the kitty has been reported to be a miserly 5 billion. His thinking of robbing from the masses to give to the upper-classes certainly worked for the past thirty years, but does England really need the A45/46 Round-about or the Kingerswell Bypass? The majority of the projects outlined for the scheme are devoted to the car with only three earmarked from rail. There have been no reports of refraining from cutting services. Welcome to the age of the Anti-Robin Hood and actually Henry III, the son of the usurper King John fought the tenets of the Magna Carta for almost fifty years. Sadly all I can see is more austerity coming for the UK and heaven help their stiff upper lips. Thanks the stars for beer.