Brendan Burgess
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A great article here by Matthew Syed
France, you see, has had governments of left and right and everything in between while delivering policies of stunning consistency for five decades. Since 1974 the state has run fiscal deficits every year. And the reason for this is obvious to everyone except, seemingly, those living inside the dreamworld. It is the settled and immoveable will of the French people to live beyond their means; to enjoy ever-rising welfare, social spending and subsidies while balking at the higher taxes, longer working hours and delayed pensions required to pay for them. The sovereign debt now stands at 120 per cent of GDP.
Barnier’s rather anaemic budget plan was merely to reduce this year’s overspend from 6 per cent to 5 per cent of GDP, but even that led to howls of outrage. Parliamentarians — ventriloquising for an electorate, every section of which has drifted into a state of endemic entitlement — offered a resounding “non!”. So the debt will keep rising, the population will keep ageing,
...
The UK electorate is, if anything, even more out to lunch. Not unlike the French, we like to blame “useless” politicians, the electoral system or being inside or outside certain trading blocs, but it’s largely a distraction from the fact that voters have become ever more detached from empirical reality; voters who (as polls consistently reveal) demand Scandinavian public services with American levels of taxation, gleaming new energy infrastructure but not in my backyard, new housing while retaining the local right to veto and triple-locked pensions but not the bill.
...
And this is what the world sees when looking at us: a civilisation that has lost the very qualities that fuelled its rise. Work ethic. Realism. An inspirational future orientation.
Old Europe is gripped by a delusion. Get real before it’s too late
The West is living in a fantasy land of free money. Our friends watch in horror, our enemies in delight
France, you see, has had governments of left and right and everything in between while delivering policies of stunning consistency for five decades. Since 1974 the state has run fiscal deficits every year. And the reason for this is obvious to everyone except, seemingly, those living inside the dreamworld. It is the settled and immoveable will of the French people to live beyond their means; to enjoy ever-rising welfare, social spending and subsidies while balking at the higher taxes, longer working hours and delayed pensions required to pay for them. The sovereign debt now stands at 120 per cent of GDP.
Barnier’s rather anaemic budget plan was merely to reduce this year’s overspend from 6 per cent to 5 per cent of GDP, but even that led to howls of outrage. Parliamentarians — ventriloquising for an electorate, every section of which has drifted into a state of endemic entitlement — offered a resounding “non!”. So the debt will keep rising, the population will keep ageing,
...
The UK electorate is, if anything, even more out to lunch. Not unlike the French, we like to blame “useless” politicians, the electoral system or being inside or outside certain trading blocs, but it’s largely a distraction from the fact that voters have become ever more detached from empirical reality; voters who (as polls consistently reveal) demand Scandinavian public services with American levels of taxation, gleaming new energy infrastructure but not in my backyard, new housing while retaining the local right to veto and triple-locked pensions but not the bill.
...
And this is what the world sees when looking at us: a civilisation that has lost the very qualities that fuelled its rise. Work ethic. Realism. An inspirational future orientation.