^^
Quote:
Originally Posted by Neal Stevens
What did they "take away" from the people? And who are the they you are referring to?
I'm assuming you mean the govt, what did they take away from the people?
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I'd guess in part social funding cutbacks, jobs (though not directly attributable to government). There's been a lot of local amenities closed down near me - libraries and community centres, not to mention all (and I mean
all) of the non privately run training and vocational opportunities at job-centres on a national level.
There are places like Learn Direct and Intraining, but they have an agenda all of their own - in order to secure training with them, you end up doing something totally unrelated to what you need experience in in order that their subsidy from the government last long enough before you complete your training course so that LD makes a profit. There are many many companies and private businesses who make a lot of money in this way, by exploiting the unemployed for government cash, more often than not they are sanctioned by the job-centre itself who know that they are just doing it for the money and are not interested in the candidates on their placement schemes.
Add to that the recent changes to disability benefit (now called 'employment support allowance') honestly some of what I hear about that is awful... try imagining making a terminally ill cancer sufferer work for his benefit, just because he can 'sit in a chair without discomfort' for 40 minutes, or making someone with osteo-porosis apply for a manual working job in warehousing.
These are not anecdotal incidents. I know the people involved, and the way the system is being run is absolutely shocking. The government agenda for 'reform of the benefits agency' is simply a blind to save money across the board because of the deficit.
Unfortunately this recession and its impact on ordinary people is much more insidious than a few banks loosing money - business refuses to grow, jobs are not created and those who fall through the employment market gaps are persecuted as scroungers because they cannot secure jobs that actually pay enough to live on in an economy that refuses to grow. By all accounts it is a vicious circle.
It's a god-awful mess imo. Not that freebooting and random thuggery really reflect these aspects of our damaged economy and social communities, they are more indicators of how bad things are in some places that the yobbos who had no respect for anyone to start with think they can openly do what they try and hide the rest of the time.
I said once that you cannot borrow your way out of a recession, but there's a good argument against cutting government spending too far during a recovery from a recession - it's liable to stall the recovery, leaving it stagnating. This is exactly what I think has now happened to the UK economy. As I said, it's a bloody mess; Likely as not to get worse.