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The
British Economy is a joke based on a joke from the year before. We are
trying to keep things that we do not need for the sake of tradition such as
outdated concepts like Queen
Elizabeth Aircraft
Carrier, Trident
missiles and more Astute
class Nuclear Submarines.
Have they not heard of robotics,
drones and satellites? And
what about importing energy that we cannot afford. Have they not heard about
solar & wind farms and electric
vehicles?
Mainstream media headlines today are focused on Britain's record national debt, which just surpassed £1 trillion, a figure that can only exponentially increase unless the entire mechanism of Government finance is overhauled. The truth however is much worse, factoring in all liabilities including state and public sector pensions, the real national debt is closer to £4.8 trillion, some £78,000 for every person in the UK.
Prime Minister
Theresa May
claims: that the Conservatives had, over the past seven years, cut the nation's deficit as a share of GDP by almost three-quarters.
Reality Check verdict: The amount being borrowed each year has been reduced from 9.9% of GDP when the coalition government took power in 2010 to 2.6% of GDP in 2016 under the
Conservative government, a reduction of almost three-quarters. But while the amount being borrowed each year has been falling, the overall debt is still rising.
The UK was hit by recession in 2008 following the financial crisis, and to cover its outgoings the government had to borrow a record £154bn in 2009.
By the time the coalition took over in 2010 that had fallen slightly to £144bn, equivalent to 9.9% of GDP.
The new Chancellor of the Exchequer, George
Osborne, announced an austerity package of tax rises and swingeing spending cuts in his June 2010 budget.
He vowed to balance Britain's books within five years - a promise that was to cause him a lot of trouble.
While the deficit did fall by almost half by 2015, it was still nearly £80bn for the year.
Philip Hammond took over as chancellor in 2016 and has seen the deficit fall further.
For the financial year to the end of March 2017, the deficit was £52bn or 2.6% of GDP. Mr Hammond has not set a hard deadline for when that will be reduced to zero.
Instead, in their 2017 manifesto, the Conservatives pledged to eliminate the deficit by the "middle of the next decade". DEBT
STATISTICS JUNE 2012 According to the Office for National Statistics (which is the executive office of the UK Statistics Authority, which reports directly to Parliament), the United Kingdom had a gross debt of:
£1,139,880,000,000
(note: This roughly translates into 1.4375 trillion
Euros, or about $1.8 trillion dollars USD.
This 1.139 trillion pound figure represents 46% of the GDP (Gross Domestic Product) of the United Kingdom.
As of June 2012, the United Kingdom had a total of 62,641,000 residents, meaning that the average citizen of the UK owes approximately:
£18,197
This works out to about 28,808 USD owed per person in the United Kingdom.
Comparatively speaking, the average US citizen owes $52,500 as their share of the US national debt.
Who does the UK government (and by extension, the citizens of the United Kingdom) owe all of this money to?
Good question - to find the answer, let's look to the Quarterly Review that is published by the UK Debt Management Office (DMO):
Bank of England (Asset Purchase Facility): £319,138,000,000
Insurance Companies and Pension Funds: £286,493,000,000
Overseas Investors: £380,342,000,000
Other Financial Institutions and Other: £90,496,000,000
Monetary Financial Institutions: £115,832,000,000
Households: £46,027,000,000
Local Authorities and Public Corporations: £2,242,000,000 
THE
DMO Our
debt situation is so bad that we have to have a Debt Management Office. The UK Debt Management Office (DMO) was established on 1 April 1998 and responsibility for government wholesale sterling debt issuance was transferred from the Bank of England to the DMO. This re-organisation followed the transfer of operational responsibility for setting official UK interest rates from HM Treasury to the Bank of England in May 1997. The DMO's remit is to carry out the Government's debt management policy of minimising financing costs over the long term, taking account of risk, and to minimise the cost of offsetting the Government's net cash flows over time, while operating in a risk appetite approved by Ministers in both cases.
WE'RE
ON THE ROAD TO NOWHERE - One of the
key elements to building a strong economy is decent roads. Roads are the
arteries of commerce. They should be fit for service and efficient in terms
of climate change.
NATIONAL
DEBT LINKS
https://www.davemanuel.com/uk-national-debt-clock.php
http://www.dmo.gov.uk/
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-39897498
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