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A Greek Tragedy beckons in Britain

I remember the days when George Osborne used to faithfully swear by Greece as a brilliant example of why austerity was absolutely needed (that was after he abandoned Ireland due to austerity tipping it over the economic edge). I am sure the reader does too. I think opponents of the austerity agenda should take Mr Osborne at his word and use Greece as a good example of exactly where implementing austerity leads.

The Greek government, in whatever form it has taken, has bent over backwards to satisfy its various creditors. It has implemented socially and economically devastating austerity and still and that hasn’t been enough. So, where is Greece now? Well, for one thing, it stands on the very brink of social anarchy and economically it is in tatters, in the second quarter of 2012, the Greek economy shrunk by 6.2%, which now means 13% shrinkage over two years. Small wonder the growth of healthier Eurozone economies is being impeded and it is now on the brink of a double-dip.

It doesn’t take a rocket-scientist or economics whizz to work out that if you take demand out of an economy which is already contracting then that will have a damaging effect. On-top of government austerity and rising prices, households also have to deal with a vast debt mountain they have acquired during the times when the credit flowed like water from a tap.

Austerity under this conditions is economically suicidal, its a bit like seeing a bush fire and rather than fetching the water hose spraying the surrounding forest with a few coats of oil. The government and Mr Osborne lay claim to possessing some kind of economic rationale behind their policies but frankly, I have yet to see any evidence to support this claim. its quite clear that their policies reveal the dominance of their inner swivel-eyed and slavering ideologue.

They are determined to hack away at the state regardless of the consequences for not just it but the people it serves. Nothing will stop them. Certainly not cold hard-facts. No matter how much the economy contracts, no matter how far down into destitution they drive millions and millions of people they will carry on and to my eternal shame they are faced with a Labour Party that is nowhere near bold enough to challenge this agenda. It isn’t prepare tod take he government on, to debunk the economically illiterate twaddle the government and media feed to people on a daily basis to justify the enhancement of their own vested interests.

Instead it wants to micro-manage Britain and the wider worlds descent into chaos by making the odd tweak here and there. This isn’t the time for a Labour Party of piecemeal change and half-measures. It is a time for a Labour Party true to its radical roots but above all a Labour Party true to itself; this is, of course, unless we really do want to follow Greece down the road it is taking straight into the abyss.

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