matt1978
www.lorch.eu
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Did anyone see this on Channel 4 last night? 9-10.30pm.
It was staggering!
UK PLC is in debt to the tune of £4.8 Trillion. The figure of £177 Billion that gets banded about in the news is only the budget defecit, the countries actual borrowing (including factoring in Public Sector pension liabilites) is actually almost £5 Trillion.
The programme was really informative, as it explained it in simple terms so thicko's like me could be equally flabbagasted and worried as the economists
Here's a couple of the analogys from the programme.
If we had to pay our debt back tomorrow and every single house and flat in the entire country was sold (at full market value) and the proceeds were put towards the re-payment, we would still be over £1 Trillion short!
If you stacked £4.8 Trillion in £50 notes (bearing in mind that it takes £500 worth of £50's to even make a 1mm pile) the pile would be over 6500 miles high!
Our country is paying more in interest on our debt than all of the combined interest on all of our mortgages and loans combined!
They also showed how little of an impact these Austerity budgets are making, they showed a bath full of water (the water representing the size of the £4.8 Trillion) and left the tap running into the bath (this extra water to represent the extra burden of interest) and the cuts the government have announced for this budget would be the equivilinet of using a egg cup to remove the water. Truely shocking.
Other things that austounded me, is that the UK economy is now over 52% controlled by the Goverment in the form of public spending initives, this is the first time ever that the Public sector has been larger than the Private sector and its obviously the Private sector which generates the income in the form of taxes and the Public sector which consumes these tax revenues. So we have less being created than that is being consumed. Even in China, the goverment only controls about 20% of the economy and thats a communist state. They recon that even in the bad times of the Eastern block countries, there regeimes never controlled as much of the economy as ours does now.
There are over 7 million people directly employed in the Public sector but less than 2 million of them are front line employees, such as Fire, Police, Nurses etc, so we have 5 Million extra in administration/red tape roles. There are less than 5 million people employed in Manufacturing in the country. All of which is unbeliveable
Another thing which suprised me, which was the mis-conception about the banks, I for one, readily believed that it was they who got us into this mess and then we lent all the money to give them to bail them out again. Its true that we did lend them money, but only to the tune of 77 Billion, now 77 Billion in the face of 4.8 Trillion, is a drop in the ocean and its fully expected that we will make a profit on that 77 Billion when we sell our shares in them. I am not defending the banks at all, but its the past collective Goverments that have created this mess, decades of spending more money than that is generated in taxes has got us to a stage now where we are teetering on the edge of Bankruptcy.
It was staggering!
UK PLC is in debt to the tune of £4.8 Trillion. The figure of £177 Billion that gets banded about in the news is only the budget defecit, the countries actual borrowing (including factoring in Public Sector pension liabilites) is actually almost £5 Trillion.
The programme was really informative, as it explained it in simple terms so thicko's like me could be equally flabbagasted and worried as the economists
Here's a couple of the analogys from the programme.
If we had to pay our debt back tomorrow and every single house and flat in the entire country was sold (at full market value) and the proceeds were put towards the re-payment, we would still be over £1 Trillion short!
If you stacked £4.8 Trillion in £50 notes (bearing in mind that it takes £500 worth of £50's to even make a 1mm pile) the pile would be over 6500 miles high!
Our country is paying more in interest on our debt than all of the combined interest on all of our mortgages and loans combined!
They also showed how little of an impact these Austerity budgets are making, they showed a bath full of water (the water representing the size of the £4.8 Trillion) and left the tap running into the bath (this extra water to represent the extra burden of interest) and the cuts the government have announced for this budget would be the equivilinet of using a egg cup to remove the water. Truely shocking.
Other things that austounded me, is that the UK economy is now over 52% controlled by the Goverment in the form of public spending initives, this is the first time ever that the Public sector has been larger than the Private sector and its obviously the Private sector which generates the income in the form of taxes and the Public sector which consumes these tax revenues. So we have less being created than that is being consumed. Even in China, the goverment only controls about 20% of the economy and thats a communist state. They recon that even in the bad times of the Eastern block countries, there regeimes never controlled as much of the economy as ours does now.
There are over 7 million people directly employed in the Public sector but less than 2 million of them are front line employees, such as Fire, Police, Nurses etc, so we have 5 Million extra in administration/red tape roles. There are less than 5 million people employed in Manufacturing in the country. All of which is unbeliveable
Another thing which suprised me, which was the mis-conception about the banks, I for one, readily believed that it was they who got us into this mess and then we lent all the money to give them to bail them out again. Its true that we did lend them money, but only to the tune of 77 Billion, now 77 Billion in the face of 4.8 Trillion, is a drop in the ocean and its fully expected that we will make a profit on that 77 Billion when we sell our shares in them. I am not defending the banks at all, but its the past collective Goverments that have created this mess, decades of spending more money than that is generated in taxes has got us to a stage now where we are teetering on the edge of Bankruptcy.