OK - the UK's in a bit of trouble with the financials right now.
I'm full o' coffee, so let's lay it all out on the table!
Caffeinated Current Events is a blogpost sub-series where I get jumped up on coffee and explain the world at large to you nice people.
(I don't do it a lot because the world at large is pretty damn exhausting.)
Think drunk history without the alcohol, or the benefits of not having to live through this sh**.
I'm going to get political - so consider this your warning. Feel free to click away if you're not interested, I won't even know. 🙈😅
Disclaimer Time: this is written for the purpose of humour and entertainment. It is also opinion, based on the information available to me at time of writing. Don't sue me, I don't have money and I'll use the publicity shamelessly.
Here in the UK we've had our current prime minister, Liz Truss, since September 5th 2022
...and she's gotten to work quickly by completely wrecking the economy.
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| Via Giphy. 'Hit the ground running' is Tory-speak for 'crash us off a cliff,' |
The state of our economy right now is:
Holy sh**, were they drunk?
Because Liz Truss' master plan for fixing the cost of living and inflation problems was to... give more money to the rich.
I kid you not.
That's her grand economic plan. Her and the new Chancellor of the Exchequer (to non-Brits: he's the top economic minister guy,) Kwasi Kwarteng.
They want to give lots of money to the rich by making it so that they don't have to pay many taxes. In the hopes that it'll somehow have a knock-on effect for everyone else.
(A thing that's apparently called 'trickle down economics' and which has never - as far as I can see - worked.)
Because taxes only do things like... I dunno... pay for all our public services. (But that's OK - we just won't put the benefits up for those struggling at the bottom! Hurrah! Ugh.)
Understandably, the financial markets basically pooped their pants because everyone and their great-Auntie Sue can tell that this was a stupid plan.
Hell, even I can tell that it was a stupid plan - and I'm still trying to get my head around analogue clocks (don't look at me like that - Dyscalculia.)
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| Via Giphy. Well Liz, we are now. |
Truss' other plans include increasing the use of fossil fuels and nuclear power.
Oh, and fracking.
Her Secretary for Business and Energy, anachronistic Victorian industrialist Jacob Rees-Mogg:
a) has a lot of investments in fossil fuels
b) thinks that we should change the definition of 'dangerous' seismic activities so that fracking wouldn't technically be dangerous
c) has a history of climate change denial
and
d) thinks we should 'get every cubic inch of gas out of the North Sea'
I swear - I have made NONE of that up.
Oh, he also wants to go back to imperial measurements instead of metric. Because he is clearly from another century.
BUT, I hear you metaphorically cry, why in the name of holy hell, did British people vote for this?!
The simple answer is WE DIDN'T.
After the disgrace of our previous PM, Boris Johnson, (for a whole lot of corrupt and disgusting reasons,) the way things work in the UK is that members of his party get to vote in the new person.
So 81,326 Conservative (aka Tory) party members, exactly, voted for her. They are the ones who have left us with Liz.
Yeah, bang up job, Tory party members. Thanks for that.
Thoughts? Sympathies? Life-jackets?
Talk to me! 😇😈💬
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Sharing and commenting keeps me hanging on in there! 😅
Damn the UK government is going through a rough patch right now, Cee! Or, I suppose it has been for a while :((( I don't know much about the new PM so thank you for educating me. I guess with all of the discourse surrounding the queen's death, people (outside of the UK) weren't really paying attention to what she would do until now. I hope y'all can somehow get out of this Tory mess soon.
ReplyDeleteShe used to be the women and equalities' minister. She spent most of her time making life more difficult for Trans people and arguing *against* the ban on conversion therapy. I don't know how, but they voted in someone who's worse than BoJo *face palms*
DeleteThat is such a mess! The Republican party in the US has been pushing the power of trickle down economies since the 80's, but it just doesn't work. When companies and the super wealthy get more money, they don't pass that money onto people below them. They simply keep the money.
ReplyDeleteNOBODY wants this - except her and her rich friends. Not even Conservative governments do this normally; it's not a policy that the UK pursues - not to these extremes, anyway. There's usually at least an *attempt* at balance.
DeleteMeanwhile, I'm sat here in Wales - a Socialist nation *inside* the UK: the further the Senedd (Welsh government) is from Westminster (UK government) politically, the less stable things tend to get here, because they're counter-acting each other.
On the plus side, I know that the Welsh Labour government will do the best they can to protect us from the storm - they've acted as a buffer for us through the worst of Cameron's austerity policies, so hopefully they can do it again. Or at least partly. *sigh*