Tax spend shock - servicing the National Debt - the General Election

HMRC sent me an email recently announcing "Your personalised tax summary is now available online, showing how much tax and National Insurance you have paid, and how it is spent by the Government".  Hmm - interesting, I thought.

The breakdown of how my tax is spent is VERY interesting:

25% on Welfare
19% on Health
13% on Education
12% on State Pensions
7%  on National Debt interest - whoa, £1 in every £14 of my taxes is used to service the nation's debt ... this is more than is spent on Defence (no, I'm not defending that), Justice, Transport, Business Industry, Government Admin, Culture. Environment, Housing and utilities, Overseas aid, and lastly (at 1/10 of those interest payments) the UK Contribution to the EU budget.

This shows to me very plainly why as a country we must reduce our Debt.  Yet if I understand correctly, all the austerity so far is only reducing the rate of increase in the Debt.  We have to do more than balance the books, we need a surplus to pay off the loans and we need this to be sustainable over decades.  

If this is achievable at all, then it needs intelligent, far-sighted strategic management which does not rely on the magic fairy of growth (which is no longer reliable), does not rely on market forces (because we want a fair society, not one at the mercy of the greedy and unscrupulous), and does not rely on passing the challenges and solutions up to a semi-federalised Europe (because that will lead to less visibility and less direct action just when we need more of those things).

I am mortified that my generation, now approaching retirement, has lived well at the expense of future generations.  So who am I going to vote for in May 2015?!  I honestly don't know.

Government gridlock could be Democracy breakthrough

Check this blog on the Royal Society for Arts, Manufacturing & Commerce (RSA) website:

Political Gridlock ... may be no bad thing

Here's my comment on that blog:

A wonderful example of positive thinking ... I like it ... I am heartened by it.

The challenge is how we get the media to report a breakthrough for democracy rather than a breakdown of government.  

My suggestion is to throw it at all the walls so that some of it may stick. Send a concise version, containing a call to action, with a link to this blog, to all political parties, to all media channels, and use public online channels such as 38degrees as well as the usual suspects to reach the people.

The step before that could be to get endorsement from known, trusted, influential and politically neutral (or at least not toxic) people - professional people, not celebrities.