Too deep, too close, too fast

Great, spent the last half an hour reading gloomy forecasts in the week’s papers for the economy (I got behind on my paper readings). NHS might need a top-up. Inflation going to fuck us all over. Savers being short-changed. Pensioners ditto. Unemployment set to continue rising. Meanwhile, certain MPs’ expenses rules are relaxed, Nick Clegg and David Cameron can’t find anything to disagree on and newspapers condemn the outrage over the cuts. Mr Clegg, if you are finding nothing to disagree with Mr Cameron on, you are doing quite a lot wrong.

But anyway. Outrage against the cuts. It’s justified. They are going to score themselves deeply into the fabric of our society, breaking threads, breaking lives. Already we’re feeling their bite. We – the general population of the UK. Not the absurdly privileged folks flexing their claws without noticing where they cut.

What has to be realised is that these cuts are not happening into a vacuum. They are happening into a social structure that already privileges some folks over others – so as the monetary freeze sets in, it will be the ones already on the outside who will suffer the most from frostbite. People’s existing prejudices will ensure that. So it’s not a case of everyone giving a little bit. It’s a case of the ones with much giving little, and the ones with little giving much.

And can we get through to the people in and around governance that a Government’s job should be the good of its people? We need to move past the outdated idea that was already being condemned in Britain in the bloody 18th/19th century that the job of a Government is to benefit the capital of a country, essentially benefitting the capitalists of a country. And who is going to be hurt by these cuts that are coming too deep, too close, too fast? The majority of the people who are not rich. Who is going to be barely affected? The rich. And they still moan.

I think that paragraph is wishful thinking, because we can’t get through to the Government at all. It seems to me that they haven’t listened – they’re not listening – they don’t care, as long as they keep their power and their money. And that scares me a lot. Democracy = rule by the people. Not rule by tricking the people.