GIDIOT!

Better Together?

The No Campaign's modus operandi is to spread doom and gloom about the future for us poor benighted Scots if we are stupid enough to think that we are not too wee, too poor and too stupid to manage without bigger, richer and cleverer England to sort out all our problems and put us back on track when we fall off.

Never a word about how fabulous the future will be within the UK, which, is after all, what the campaign's name suggests.

Upon reflection, this is not surprising, given recent history and future projected by many, not least the current Westminster government.

Just as an example of good things are while we are together, we might look at inflation as revealed in a survey by uSwitch.com.

Basic household needs have increased  by a staggering 25% over  the last 5 years since the banking system went into melt down and the much vaunted "end to boom and bust" became just "the end to boom".

Many of the items are absolutely necessary to even the meanest of incomes: rent, food, gas, electricity (and in England, council tax and water). There have also been steep increases in other, slightly less necessary items such as petrol and car insurance (you can take the bus or walk), phone line rental (you can shout loud), house and contents insurance (you can take the risk that nothing will happen).

The "average" monthly bill in 2008 was £1,237 and in 2013 is £1,544. 

In the same period wages for ordinary people have increased by an average of 6%.

Rents have increased by 24%; council tax by 15% in England, 0% in Scotland; food by 17%; gas by an incredible 52%; electricity by 32%.

Given that these items take up by far and away the greatest amount of the poorer persons' income, you have to wonder how some people manage, or if indeed they do at all.

The survey on the website which compares energy prices, points out that people are having to turn to credit to stay afloat, but that the most accessible forms of credit are are often the most dangerous.

Using the credit card to make up for a shortfall in one month's income is an acceptable way of dealing with short term shortage of funds, but we all know that on anything more permanent, like the fact that wages no longer cover the basic costs of living, they, like payday loans, are a disaster. In the survey 40% of respondents said that they did not have enough money and just under 20% said that they were worried about losing their jobs.

The treasury response, showing a typical lack of understanding of what life is like for people without golden spoons in every orifice, is that low interest rates (a huge financial drain on anyone with a little savings), income tax cuts (which don't help the very poorest, who don't earn enough to pay income tax), freezes to council tax (only very recently in England) and fuel duty escalator freeze (which again doesn't help the poorest who can't afford cars) were helping households. 

Heaven preserve us from a government that doesn't live on, and hasn't even visited, the same planet as the population.