Hi Stevie!

What really mystifies me is that quite a few people seem to think that it's right to go on like this! I've had it said to me that our people are paid too much - except those saying so, of course - and somehow it'll all come right by heaping on more misery.
What those who think like this seem not to understand is that we must have a decently paid and productive middle class, if we are to have services and the trappings of a modern state; and that the rich especially contribute little to the state. The rich keep their money, whilst the poor don't have any; - it's the taxes paid by the middle that funds everything! There is actually some fair news in the midst of the gloom; the motor industry, for instance, is performing very well indeed. What concerns me is that the people employed in that industry may get so demoralised too that they don't perform so well, and the prophesies of doom become self-fulfilling.
I firmly believe though that our government wants an economy based on having a few very rich people served by a destitute majority, and they are hell-bent on achieving that aim. A return, in fact, to a Georgian-style economy. In the decades after WWII, our industrial leaders did what the bankers and other rich are doing now, paying themselves huge amounts f0or poor performance and failure. Of course, the unions capitalised on it didn't they? And everyone went along with that. But now, the population seems so cowed that they'll stand anything.