One of the worst things about being a widow is total responsibility for everything that is involved in running a life & home today - No one to share the jobs with. The absolute bane of my life is money & everything associated with it. I always put off reconciling my bank statements & switching insurances. When you know that your time available is diminishing by the hour, you resent even more having to do jobs that you hate.
Translating my complex but relatively simple economic reality to UK & world economics is utterly baffling. In the last weeks & months we have had the funeral of the Queen, the coronation of the King, Eurovision, sending arms to Ukraine, multiple costly strikes, the earthquake response, expensive public enquiries....All of which total millions even billions of taxpayers money. There may not be a "magic money tree", but this government do seem to find money from somewhere to fund expensive & sometimes questionable expenditure.
We must have contingency funds for vital support for dire events at home & worldwide. But I really do question the cost benefit analysis that seems to justify spending 125 million $ on the coronation ceremony alone. The three day event, including the concert cost far more. The argument is always that these events, like Eurovision, generate a lot of tourist income. I'm sure they do, but my maths skills aren't up to understanding how that is calculated or whether it is justifiable in the current circumstances.
The bottom line for me is that millions in the UK live in unsuitable accommodation, (3.6 million children, 9.2 million working age adults and 2 million pensioners), or are homeless (271,000 at least in Jan 2023 including 123,000 children). The statistics for food bank use in the UK are shocking. In 2022/23 approximately 2.99 million people used a foodbank in the United Kingdom. Not just the unemployed, but working poor.
https://www.statista.com/statistics/382695/uk-foodbank-users/
It is hard not to blame our government who have been in power for 13 years. The whole point of government is that they have the Civil Service & huge numbers of advisors & researchers with access to information that we don't have. They are in a position to make decisions & plan for the long term future using reliable information. In housing, for example they know demographic trends years in advance. Yet the UK has consistantly failed to provide enough housing for it's citizens.
They knew that experts warned of a pandemic years befor it happened, but were totally unprepared for it.
Ukraine has effectively been on a war footing with Russia since 2014 when Russia took over Crimea, but a report in 2019 said the conservatives had cut MOD spending by 25% while in power.
Our so called democracy is based on governments who don't take the long view & look at the consequences of actions. They depend on focus groups to tell them what is likely to get them re-elected & that is their main driver. Once politicians have power, they want to keep it at any cost. Just look at Turkey today if you don't believe that.
The simple fact is that the rich are getting richer & the poor are getting poorer & the gap between the two is increasing all the time. The UK has a very high level of income inequality compared to other developed countries.It's a recipe for disaster.
https://equalitytrust.org.uk/scale-economic-inequality-uk
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