This should tell us everything we need to know about life in Tory-dominated UK but it won’t will it – There is an interesting article in the Financial Times today, or over the weekend, but worth a read.
The highlights are –
Average real earnings have fallen by 7 percent since a year ago and predict that earnings will take four or five years to recover to the levels of January 2022(opens a new window).
The British economy is in a generation-long slough of despond, a slow-burning economic catastrophe. Real household disposable income per capita has barely increased for 15 years.
The past 15 years have been a disappointment on a scale that previous generations of British economists could hardly have imagined.
We have rising taxes. At more than 37 per cent of national income, they are four percentage points higher than they’ve tended to be over the past four decades.
Debt is high, the deficit is a permanent fixture and interest payments on public debt have risen to levels not seen for 40 years.
Resolution Foundation in late November found that about a quarter of people said they couldn’t afford regular savings of £10 a month, couldn’t afford to spend small sums on themselves, couldn’t afford to replace electrical goods and couldn’t afford to switch on the heating when needed.
This is what you get when you allow voters in another country to elect predominantly Tory right wing nut jobs to govern your colony.
I’ve been reading Gerry Hassan’s new book “Scotland Rising – The Case for Independence” and overall it is a pretty fair assessment. I don’t agree with everything he says but he makes sense in a lot of what he says. While he points the flaws in both yes and no I can’t help but feel that.
There is no case for Scotland remaining in this shit hole yet many still want to, the SNP/Greens are doing nothing to change the situation, have learned nothing from 2014, and we find ourselves trapped in perpetual decline when we should be doing everything we can, with Scotland’s abundant resources and talent, to grasp an exciting future, but we’re not and I can’t for the life of me think why other than the absolute failure of Sturgeon to show us that alternative future.
For Gerry, many of the soft no’s need to be understood in their dual nationality of being both British and Scottish, that the economic arguments for an independent Scotland were not made, that yes painted a utopia without acknowledging the difficulties. There might be some truth to that, who am I to say Gerry is not spot on, but with all of the evidence of the decline, the greed, the corruption, the absence of democracy, in the UK I can’t help but come to the conclusion, as I have for years that Scots remain colonised and suffering from Jockholme Syndrome, we are cowards because little else can explain this mess.
grumpyscottishman.wordpress.com 
Everything is shit . 12 years of the Tories l blame them they are nothing more than economic Vultures . l despise their greed, lies and corruption . Its in plain sight.
Pauline
I tend to agree, I can’t remember things as bad as this, even the 80’s. I can also never my head around who in their right mind can vote Tory. They are as you say, they do the same things every time. They shaft the poor, they sell off what they can get away, the steal and lie, they trash the economy. They then go away for a little while, they re-group, and then they come back for more because they know the idiots down south will vote them back in after a concerted effort from the right wing media, and the colonised house jocks will sit back say Labour will be in soon.
Thanks for commenting.
Bruce
And Gerry Hassan is one of these with a colonised mind.
There are no ‘Soft Nos’, there are only the undecided. Anybody who still supports the British Union after all the sh!t that has gone down since the referendum mus, by definition, be a ‘hard No’. And a hard nosed Hard No at that!
The case that has to be made to these people is our own Project Fear – Scare the bajesus out of them if we stay in the UK by emphasising:
• Inflation – it’s in double digits so watch out for your savings
• Cost of living – better swap Waitrose and M&S for Lidl and Aldi
• Energy Bills – you think they are high now, just wait till next winter
• Pensions – these are lowest in Western Europe and will go lower in real
terms
• Foodbanks – there will be more of these with less items in stock
That should assist in the conversion of waverers and the undecided.
Duncanio
The picture you paint sadly is what is on the way, possibly even worse as the recession takes hold and people start to lose their jobs and can’t afford their homes. You can’t make up how shit the UK is and the fact that so many will still vote no, they are the British house jocks and they won’t ever change. I am not a huge fan of Gerry Hassan either, even if he is from Dundee, but he does make some fair points in his book to be fair to him. I am nearly finished it and I would say it is worth a read.
Thanks for commenting.
Bruce
Reblogged this on Ramblings of a now 60+ Female.
The naw bags deserve everything they get, which will be less than nothing. They believe they belong to a country that doesn’t exist and swear fealty to any king or queen that drops out of their loins. Believing that God, the christian one I imagine, to endorse their status as ruling monarchs by appointment.
The fake leader of the fake national government, has been telling us that she/her/ambassadoress/fannytator/etc has Imposter Syndrome, is British and wants to improve the UK. She also wants to be an international ambassadoress for women’s rights by destroying their rights here, and selling Scottish assets and tendering out work abroad and generally doing a thorough good job of being an outstanding example of what a modern liberated Scotland does not want. She is quite literally another Margaret Thatcher, born here but not Scottish, and doing a very good job of destroying the Scottish economy, society and it’s culture.
What next………….inverting the Scottish maritime map so as to gift the english establishment the oil and it’s rigs and trump Blair so she can have a laugh later while her UN copter takes her to a place where people have no shoes so she can talk about human rights and whirly bird back to London, her new home..
How the fuck did we get into such a mess! How in hell did we manage to spawn someone such as Sturgeon, the colonial queen of Scotland!
BR
We got here because too many of the house jocks just could not get themselves over the line, plus the yes side were too optimistic and afraid to admit that things were going to be difficult but worth it. Both sides got their message wrong but Project Fear went too far, they went out to scare people to death and to rob the rest of their confidence and self-belief, exactly what the union is built on, the perfect colonial play book. Sturgeon, if she can’t capitalise on the worst set of Tories there has been since the dark ages, the state of the UK, the poverty etc then will she never take advantage of anything that takes us closer to independence.
Thanks for commenting.
Bruce
I can’t hear the name Gerry Hassan , without remembering him accusing the gay candidates, N Hanvey and J Eadie, ALBA fielded in 2021 of homophobia. I do not respect G Hassan.
Max
Not a huge fan either but his book has some fair points. Things are bad though right now so you have to wonder what it will take to wake up the house jocks to what our colonial status actually means.
Thanks for commenting.
Bruce
It us very difficult in a country where since birth you have been brainwashed told lies and feed blatant propaganda every day in life. We have been denied our history our culture even our political party, the main vehicle for independence has been taken over by the colonist dark state.
Look at the Aljeera Labour files and you begin to see how political parties are infuriated by the establishment , policies are then watered down and discarded to suit the elite. We dont control our media our masters write the narrative. We need to keep on getting the message out there and self education is key to combating the constant lies.
Dissolve the Union.
Alastair
You are not wrong and I wish I had the answers that would convince the house jocks but if the state of things right now doesn’t convince them then you have to suspect that nothing will sadly. The UK has been a shit hole but right now it is as bad as I can remember. It will only get worse as Duncanio has commented but will that even be enough to convince the brain washed hard no’s and the house jocks, nope.
Thanks for commenting.
Bruce
The UK is in a mess because Brexit has simultaneously reduced inward investment and outward trade flows. The Treasury has to make up the shortfall with tax rises. As a consequence, there is less money to spend and the economy takes yet another nosedive.
Freed from long-term EU policy, the UK is now fully exposed to its own insistence on short-term, translactional governance. In the future, we will see trade policy reversals that characterise developing nations rather than stable, wealthy ones.
The big companies of today were once small companies. Small businesses, however, cannot grow beyond the UK market because Brexit has added an administrative and regulatory burden that eats all of their profits on EU sales. What kind of future are we looking at here?
An increasingly protectionist outlook in the US and the EU (and China but that is not new) means the UK will be squeezed by all 3. There is zero chance of the UK participating in any meaningful way in e-vehicle manufacture. The same is true of robotics and AI and pharma development. The collapse of British Volt followed the template of Brexit perfectly.
Where is the UK government in all this? Instead of pursuing meaningful policy initiatives, they’ve spent the last 6.5 years dealing with Brexit. It will spend the next 6.5 years dealing with Brexit, too. Any spare capacity has been wasted on pointless culture wars that provide the only victory they can point at.
Why is the UK the only leading economy expected to be in recession 2023? It’s not due to the war in Ukraine and it’s not due to Covid.
You voted for Brexit. You got Brexit.
Terry
I won’t pretend to have your knowledge of the EU, or understanding of economics, but it seems to me that India / China will be the new super powers going forward. A lot of the minerals the world requires right now are in the African continent and China have a foot hold via investment that the USA/EU can’t compete with. I think the EU will muddle on through due to the members states and the union but I just don’t see any major growth for the EU either as long as it remains tied into the same neo-liberal model that is driving the USA towards unsustainable debt. The UK is over, Brexit has just sped up a process that started a long time ago. The EU was keeping the UKs head above water but even if the UK had remained it would still be sinking, just more slowly. The UK is paying the price for Thatcher and the 80’s by voters, mainly in England, believing in the individualism and exploitation of the Tories helped by Labour giving up every principle they ever held to try and snatch a few crumbs. The best thing that could happen to the UK would be Scottish independence as it would force England to look at itself and its place in the world. Sadly that probably won’t happen due the cowardice in too many Scots and colonialism in the rest. The whole thing is a mess, but either way the UK as a power is coming to an end, not a bad thing really inn many ways.
Thanks for commenting.
Bruce