( A twenty to thirty minute Diagnostician read)
The woeful state of things in the UK implies that there is more than something really very wrong other than just Brexit.
No amount of Government building policies around popular fears, rather than established facts is going to cure its problems.
The UK is ethnically diverse, partly as a legacy of empire. Lately, the country has been struggling with issues revolving around multiculturalism, immigration and national identity, not to mention personal debt and a clatter of other problems that all require investment it has not got.
It is known as the home of both modern parliamentary democracy and the Industrial Revolution with a rich literary heritage. Two world wars and the end of empire diminished its role in the 20th century, and the 2016 referendum vote to leave the European Union has raised significant questions about the country’s global role.
One of the most startling aspects of England at present is the way things that were once considered to be virtues have now become the object of intense disapproval, and vice versa. You could be right in thinking that it is in the process of dismantling everything that made the country great.
Whether its in our out of the EU, the Great British trade-off will result in the country loosing its identity, with minority groups dictating what should be said and done.
More recently, the UK has suffered a deep economic slump and high public debt as a result of the 2008 financial crisis, which revealed its over-reliance on easy credit, domestic consumption and rising house prices.
With a gigafying of it working force, we now see a country that ruled by a minority government in order to maintain their grip on power that has already bribed 10 DUP representatives from a Northerner Ireland a party that has many historical connections to multiple terrorists Ulster militias.
In my option it not only needs a doctor but of a Brain Scan when it comes to prioritizing its spending.
A country that spends around £38.3bn yearly on defense, (5th Largest defense
budget in the world), plus £41 billion to maintain Trident, while needing to build 300,000 homes each year, with around 1.2 million people using food banks, with nearly 2 million landlords letting five million properties, banking a round £15 billion a year, with one million on ZERO-HOUR contracts, with a national health service going broke, with an economy that cannot provide free education, the UK has very little to gain by quitting the EU and much to lose.
{It will need to rethink its military and security alliances, at a time of heightened anxiety over Russia and the Middle East. Above all, it will have to cope with the domestic political consequences of opting out of the EU.]
A country that spends £334 million a year on a Royal Family, with over 9000 betting shops, generating £7.1bn Revenues, with Student loan debts of more than £100bn and seven out of ten adults have on average credit cards debts of £6,372 because it turned shopping into a sport.
A Country that runs a National Lottery accused of “making a mockery” of its monopoly with an operation profit £71 million. (The odds of winning the draw’s jackpot have now plummeted to one in 45 million.) with millions of pounds been paid to Camelot’s parent company, Canada’s Ontario Teachers’ Pension Plan.
A country renowned for being the most expensive in Rail travel in Europe, possibly the world, with a national debt that is rising, building a new Crossrail that will boost London’s rail, costing £14.8 billion or £202 million per mile.
Replacing a nuclear power station Hinkley Point C nuclear power plant could be as high as £37bn,
A country that in January 2017 has a Public sector net debt of £1,682.8 billion equivalent to 85.3% of GDP, rising at £5500 per second! (Importantly the figure excludes borrowing by Royal Bank of Scotland, which is 73% owned by the government. Debt interest payments are rising close to £70bn given the forecast rise in national debt.
The majority of UK debt used to be held by the UK private sector, but due to the financial crises the Bank of England has bought gilts taking its holding to 25% of UK public sector debt.
It is worth bearing in mind that other countries have a much bigger problem. Japan, for example, has a National debt of 225%, Italy is over 120%. The US national debt is close to 80% of GDP.
- Another way to examine UK debt is to look at both government debt and private debt combined.
- Total UK debt includes household sector debt, business sector debt, financial sector debt and government debt. This is over 500% of GDP.
- Wonga loans” economics.
- Governments can and do default. Argentina and Russia to give two fairly recent examples. Also, the ability to print money does not mean you can in reality repay a debt. If the government borrows money in its own currency, then devalues that currency to the point where it is worthless, then repays the debt in the worthless currency, has the lender been repaid? I think not. You really can lose money lending to a government.
- Efforts to rein in the public debt – one of the developed world’s highest – has led to deep cuts to welfare, government services and the military, prompting concern about social equality and a possible loss of international influence.
- 571 homicides per year
The economy is in decline, the pound is drifting towards parity with the dollar, the jobless lines are lengthening. Racists and xenophobes are gripped by an elated sense of entitlement.
In 2015 £39,023,564 was spent by 57 parties and 23 non-party campaigners with the SNAP General Election on June 8 this year costing the taxpayer around £143m.
The house of Lords cost the tax payer £9 million a year. God only knows what The entire Westminster setup costs. An educated quest would be between £200 million and £500 million.
The process of deindustrialisation has left behind lasting social problems and pockets of economic weakness in parts of the country.
The divide opening up between an open, cosmopolitan capital city and its closed, isolationist country is causing its own conflict.
Surely Britain’s interest lies in reducing the cost of trade with its largest trade partners – which the EU evidently does.
If one looks at the UK from the outside since its vote in a non-binding referendum to leave the EU, you could not be blamed for thinking that it is now a country with a minority government carrying out policies of isolation by career politicians only interested in their own agenda.
Leaving the EU will not reduce barriers to services trade. It may increase them,
unless the EU granted Britain the same level of access to its services markets that is currently available. It is undermining everything England is and always has been. The UK has always been a country of immigrants and diversity, and has grown great on the back of it. That disruption is essential for innovation, whether it be in business, technology, or food and culture — imagine what English food would be without the foreign influence of centuries of immigrants!
Life will be uncomfortable on the outside: The UK will be powerless to push for liberalization of EU services markets; it will find that in some sectors,
inward investors will switch their money to countries inside the EU.
It is going to find it very difficult to negotiate trade agreements with non-EU countries as comprehensive as those that the EU regularly agrees.
The idea that the UK would be freer outside the EU is based on a series of misconceptions: that a medium-sized, open economy could hold sway in an increasingly fractured trading system, dominated by the US, the EU and China; that the EU makes it harder for Britain to penetrate emerging markets; and that foreign capital would be more attracted to Britain’s economy if it were no longer a part of the single market.
The UK should base policy on evidence, which largely points to one conclusion: that it should stay in the EU.
Sovereignty, in a world driven by technology and a social Media which is filtered by Algorithms in effect, is a myth. The very idea of self-government is mostly a delusion.
It wont have any more useful sovereignty outside the EU than it does inside — indeed it might have less, because there’s strength in numbers. Outside the union, Britain’s government would still be constrained by the forces of geopolitics and economics, and it would have fewer friends:
If it persists in going further down this route it risk becoming like our embarrassing European neighbors that will need to negotiate new trade agreements with all its non-EU partners, an enormous undertaking.
Any government that will ignore advice from a world expert because they’re not British is not worthy of any role in the politics of a country that has, historically, been known as an open, liberal, progressive place, and has prospered as a result. These are not the days when prejudice, propaganda, naked xenophobia and callous fear-mongering will win out over the common sense that England like to pride themselves on.
Not on a day when you are being congratulated by Donald Trump, Marine Le Pen, and nobody else.
Now apply the same thought to your economy, industry, and universities.
What the dumb populist thinking fails to recognize is that if someone moves to England from abroad and gets a job, they also pay tax, and spend the money they earn on stuff, which in turn leads to more jobs, and more tax income.
Imagine if our doctors treated us for what we feared was wrong, rather than for what they prove is wrong.
We allow our doctors to tell us that our fears are unfounded, and to use facts and science to show us what is actually happening. Our current politicians are to policy what crystal-waving quack healers are to doctors.
The Government is proposing policies that make liberal-minded people feel physically sick in order to tackle an immigration problem that exists in the minds of people, but not in reality. Going down the path of pandering that much to the electorate for the sake of winning votes is very weak.
Imagine if your doctor kept you as a patient by telling you what she thinks you’d like to hear, rather than what is medically true and important. When people think there is a problem with immigration, do you address the fact that they are wrong, or do you just go off and solve that imaginary problem with policies that will, in fact, cause the problem to start to exist.
The U.K. has a lot to lose if the EU decided to be unaccommodating, and I’m betting the EU will. To make a success of remaining in the EU as currently constituted, Britain would either have to change its attitude to closer political integration or deflect the other governments from that goal. Either of those tasks will be as hard as arranging a friendly split. Britain’s instinctive euro-skepticism won’t dissolve in the foreseeable future, and the country isn’t interested in being told otherwise.
Europe’s other governments won’t help Britain prove the viability of more economic integration combined with less political integration. The split wouldn’t be friendly, and Europe is in a position to make Britain pay.
If Europe wanted to, it could in fact agree to a friendly divorce, preserving most of the union’s mutual single-market benefits but letting Britain step aside from the political project.
This was never a referendum on the EU. It was a referendum on the modern world.
Deep economic integration didn’t require a single currency, a European Parliament and least of all a European Court of Justice (a supreme court of the EU).
On the other hand on the face of it, there’s no reason you couldn’t combine single-market freedoms with more national sovereignty than the EU’s members now have.
The U.K.’s decision is enormously consequential not because it will settle things, but because it offers two completely different sets of challenges — a finely balanced choice between two extremely demanding futures.
It is now badly in need of a doctor.
Naturally, depending on your political viewpoint, you can interpret these basic facts to suit your view. More importantly, be wary of people selling you false equivalences or telling you there’s never an objectively true answer.
The United Kingdom is a state made up of the historic countries of England, Wales and Scotland, as well as Northern Ireland. Three of which have devolved powers. At the end of the day the UK, or even just England, is tiny.
Anyone feel like they’ve got their country back yet? No?
Does it matter?
After all, world governments owe the money to their own citizens, not to the Martians. But the rising total is important for two reasons. First, when debt rises faster than economic output (as it has been doing in recent years), higher government debt implies more state interference in the economy and higher taxes in the future. Second, debt must be rolled over at regular intervals. This creates a recurring popularity test for individual governments, rather as reality TV show contestants face a public phone vote every week. Fail that vote, as various euro-zone governments have done, and the country (and its neighbours) can be plunged into crisis.
So the return to health plan should be:
A reallocation of the countries wealth, free education, and some long term aspirations that the country can embrace as a whole- such as making its self self sufficient in green energy, the scrapping of faith schools, the doubling of Overseas aid if it wants to cut migrants, the reinstatement of compulsory arm service, the downgrading of the Royal Family to a tourist attraction, cut the member of the house of lords to 400, have another in or out referendum and vote on reality.
All comments appreciated, all like clicks chucked in the bin. 
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