Your pocket my pocket our pockets

If you think that the world is in a mess think about your own credit card balance, the overdraft you have, the parts of your home that need a fix up, then look at the PS3, Wii, IPhone, fast car and think about where they came from and what you could have done better with that money. When you realise your money has not gone as far as you want then you can cut back, make a budget, or maybe go into further debt in the hope you will one day come out the other side smiling. Now give yourself the job of doing this for the country and you may then perhaps realise its never going to be easy keeping all those people happy because whether we as a country go further into debt, cut back, or make a budget there will always be something or someone that has to end up with less than what they want.  

There are of course those who are genuinely needy and whom we have to support, in the same way you will make sure you can eat or heat. What happens when everyone says they are needy and we must have everything to help everyone? What tends happen is, rather then stop eating and heating, you find a way to keep ‘some of
all’ rather than ‘all of some’. So we have less police out there because of cuts, we have less nurses and forces personnel but right now (and I could be proved wrong later down the line) I don’t see the country falling apart and people dying in greater numbers, I just see us getting on with things as best we can because that is the spirit of working for a better future. 

When you realise your home finances are knackered and you have made the decision to go into debt on a credit card shops thank you for this. If you decide on a sensible approach and cut back your spend the shops don’t thank you. The decision you make, for the reason you need to, affects far more than just you and your immediate family. So when over the past few years we have all spent our pay rise, mortgaged ourselves to the limit and bought all the gadgets (we think we need) all we have done is build a false image of the state of our financial position in life. So when it goes wrong we don’t say to ourselves “If only I had not bought that, or if only I had saved that” we simply blame our employers, the politicians, the banks (though that is an institute that does deserve a rant), the Europeans......basically everyone but ourselves.

The government (and it really doesn’t matter which one we are talking about) has had to make some cuts and impose a tough budget because we spent and borrowed ourselves into debt. Everyone who makes a false claim, everyone who takes benefit wrongly, everyone who delights in stealing, rioting or simply taking what is not theirs is heaping strain on an already stretched national wallet (or purse - lets not be sexist). All in all think about how you would feel if you were living in Greece right now.