The UK: How will it end?

[Vortex]

- The Govt is overspending by ?50bn or so per year
- ?25bn +++ is being spent on Northern Rock
- ?100bn new govt pension liabilities each year
- Umpteen billion on PFI projects
- Rising energy import costs
- Significant food inflation
- Sneaky re-rating of house council tax bands
etc etc


All this is leading to increased taxes and ever increasing burdens on the British with no sign of any let up.

How will this all end?

(Thanks to Brian Gilbert, Middx for the idea behind this post)

[clv101]

Economic collapse - Soviet style, but more gentle, drawn out over more than a decade... and never really recovering the material affluence of today. The end of New Labour for a long time.

[danza]

clv101 - Quite likely. I do not see too many other alternatives.

Its tighten your belts time all round. We all knew something like this was coming.

[JohnB]

But Northern Rock have promised to pay it back in the next couple of years. And they've just e-mailed me to announce a cut in the interest rate on my savings to help them do it .

[Andy Hunt]

- The Govt is overspending by ?50bn or so per year
- ?25bn +++ is being spent on Northern Rock
- ?100bn new govt pension liabilities each year
- Umpteen billion on PFI projects
- Rising energy import costs
- Significant food inflation
- Sneaky re-rating of house council tax bands
etc etc


All this is leading to increased taxes and ever increasing burdens on the British with no sign of any let up.

How will this all end?

(Thanks to Brian Gilbert, Middx for the idea behind this post)

You forgot the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. Anyone got a figure for those? ?1 trillion?

[biffvernon]

-
All this is leading to increased taxes and ever increasing burdens on the British with no sign of any let up

And how does the British tax burden compare with other European countries?

New Labour are safe - they have discovered free school meals

[Vortex]

"Dad's got a good job at a bank. We'll be fine."

[MacG]

Nobody can tell how it will end. The system is just to complex and nobody understands it. Mankind has never been in a similar situation before, and there are no historical examples to look at for guidance.

[clv101]

-
All this is leading to increased taxes and ever increasing burdens on the British with no sign of any let up

And how does the British tax burden compare with other European countries?

UK is about the lowest overall tax burden in Europe except the for formor Soviet states and Ireland.

Nobody can tell how it will end. The system is just to complex and nobody understands it. Mankind has never been in a similar situation before, and there are no historical examples to look at for guidance.

True no one can tell how it will end but that doesn't mean we can't make educated guesses about the future. I mean I don't expect "business as usual", 9bn people reaching "industrialised" society and driving 4bn cars... If we can rule things out then what's left is ruled in.

[snow hope]

Recession
Business' going under in their droves
Unemployment soaring
Unheard of levels of house reposessions
Inflation then hyper-inflation as all important goods go into short supply
Rising crime levels as people resort to stealing to survive
Depression
Starvation
Die-off
Recovery to a different way of life - fittest/luckiest survive
The world starts to ro-organise slowly with new priorities - water, food, shelter, sustainability, humanity.

God that is sad. I have exposed my worst fears above.

[danza]

Snow- dont get too depressed. We may experience some good weather soon. Its summer time.

[snow hope]

The underlying problem is the exponential growth function. Homo Sapiens are in Overshoot - this has only occured in the last century- we have gone from 1.5 billion people to 6.5 billion people in a 100 years and the earth can't take it. As a species we are in overshoot and the only solution is to reverse the numbers.

We have to reduce the population of humans!

[Andy Hunt]

Recession
Business' going under in their droves
Unemployment soaring
Unheard of levels of house reposessions
Inflation then hyper-inflation as all important goods go into short supply
Rising crime levels as people resort to stealing to survive
Depression
Starvation
Die-off
Recovery to a different way of life - fittest/luckiest survive
The world starts to ro-organise slowly with new priorities - water, food, shelter, sustainability, humanity.

God that is sad. I have exposed my worst fears above.

I always knew you were an optimist snow!!!

[clv101]

Unheard of levels of house reposessions

Seeing as there will be approximately the same number of people and the same number of houses in the country as all this happens - how do you see the people distributed between the houses during the unheard of levels of house repossession?

[snow hope]

Unheard of levels of house reposessions

Seeing as there will be approximately the same number of people and the same number of houses in the country as all this happens - how do you see the people distributed between the houses during the unheard of levels of house repossession?

Ummmm, I don't think there will be 60m houses Chris?

I think what is going to happen is that families will go back to being 2 parents, 2/3/4 kids, 2/3/4 grandparents all living in a 2/3/4 bedroom house. We are going to have to pool our resources and move in with the extended family as more people become unemployed and as more people are required to grow food and support each other during the tough times to come.

Many houses will go to rack and ruin - houses without fires and chimney brests for instance - no way to heat the house. Areas of the country that are too remote to survive will be abandoned. Many city tower blocks will be abandoned. Some inner city areas may well be abandoned due to gangs/violence/crime/general chaos.

I HOPE I have this completley wrong Chris, but this is the kind of worse case scenario I can see develop. I HOPE it will be better, but I don't like to rely on HOPE.