Britain’s finances are in a mess. The public debt is huge and runs into the Trillions of pounds. We’ve been here before and been in situations where Britain has had to run up horrendous levels of debt in order to deal with some existential crisis whether that be a World War or the need to fight the French. But the difference is that today’s national debt is not being run up to deal with a problem caused whether in whole or in part by Napoleon or the German Kaiser or the Uni-testicled Austrian Corporal, which could be seen as something reasonable, but it is being run up to pay the nation’s day to day running costs.
Yes, Britain is drowning in debt not because Britain needs to deal with a problem that has been forced upon it but because successive governments have borrowed to pay for welfare or the NHS or failed renewable energy schemes. To give a personal finance analogy it’s one thing to borrow money to replace a car that can no longer be economically repaired, that would be a reasonable choice for getting finance but it is quite another to borrow to buy not just the car but also to pay for fuel, road tax and car insurance. The first is reasonable and understandable, the second is reckless.
Successive governments instead of making sure that the country can earn enough to afford the services that it gives to the public (or pretends to) is just borrowing on the open market to pay for the nation’s day to day expenses. Britain is even borrowing to re-finance historic loans.
The sheer horror of Britain’s national debt is laid bare in an article by David Coates over at The Critic magazine. In his piece he lays out just how bad Britain’s financial position truly is. Mr Coates said that we are paying a lot for Britain’s debt and that servicing that debt is Britain’s third highest expenditure. Mr Coates said that we spend more on debt servicing than we do on either Education or Defence.
Please read Mr Coates’s piece I can guarantee that it will send a shiver down your spine such is the high level of indebtedness that Britain is now in.
https://thecritic.co.uk/britains-fiscal-crisis/
Britain is in a horrific place financially and the levels of debt that the nation has incurred either for good or bad reasons is unsustainable. We can’t go on paying for debts that are more than we pay to defend the nation, Britain needs to be much more economically efficient and earn via trade the money to run the nation and governments need to recognise that and not just borrow even more money and hope for the best and leave the eventual big problems to some future administration.
