It started in the 40s. We were so poor after the war, that we were effectively broke. The good news was that we produced products the world still wanted. Cars, aircraft, ships, etc. We made big, expensive items.
We manufactured our way out of the debt caused by the war.
But just as we were doing that, at the same time we were losing our Empire. The Empire had supplied us with revenue, enough to keep us the superpower we had been up until the 40s.
The loss of Empire meant we had to generate wealth from the UK alone. Sadly, there just wasn't enough real estate to generate that sort of wealth.
The Sixties were the last golden times. We still had all the huge manufacturing facilities that allowed us to manufacture the expensive items we needed to at least keep the country alive.
Although during the Sixties, we had the warning signs. Beeching's railway cuts, Duncan Sandys' Defence white Paper. These were the first trimmings and the first indications that the supply of money could not keep up with expenditure.
Interestingly, we also disbanded the Civil Defence force in the late sixties. Yet the Cold War was still raging.
Then the Seventies arrived, and with it a rabidly Socialist Labour party and a wet Tory party. Things got rapidly worse. Four day weeks, strikes, the Unions saw weak government and went for the jugular.
Money supply went haywire. We can't get money through revenue, so let's just print it. And so inflation went through the roof.
Heath's wet Tories just made things worse. They were an irrelevance that did untold damage by joining the Common Market, in an attempt to use Europe as a liferaft. Tying that liferaft to Germany's economy would, for a while, keep us afloat.
Things declined rapidly through the seventies, to the winter of discontent in '78.
Then came Saint Margaret of Thatcher. Well, most on the right would class her as a saint, or a saviour of the country.
She did turn the country around and things did seemingly improve. As a young adult at the time she came to power, the difference between Maggie's government and Calaghan's preceding Labour government was night and day.
It's hard to encapsulate what Maggie did in the first half of the Eighties to transform the country, but here goes.
She cut all the dross, the waste, the overspend. She was ruthless in her application of cuts.
The public sector, the tail that had wagged the dog during the seventies got sharp shrift: there would be no more automatic pay rises.
Defence spending was already scaled back (leading to the Falklands War) which then required some "adjustment" after the Falklands was won back.
The money supply, printing of money was curtailed. We call it quantative easing today, but it's still printing money you don't have. It was slowed or in fact stopped under Maggie.
"The market" became the phrase de jour. The market would, with a little help from government generate the wealth needed to keep the country going. The government relaxed controls to help grease the wheels.
And the market helped, but didn't provide the necessary wealth. Maggie had to resorts to steep cuts in public spending and selling off assets like publicly owned utility companies in order to keep things afloat. Basically public owned companies were firesaled. Just get rid of them to stop any further spending. Whether they swam or sank wasn't an issue for the government.
The era of the "Yuppie" came along in the mid-eighties, as the deregulated stock market became a money-making giant. It made money, but very little of that money trickled down to the poorest in society.
It still wasn't enough though. Services continued to decline and a way of offsetting that was the Poll Tax: making people pay slightly more for the services provided by local councils. It went down like a lead balloon with the population.
The poll tax riots ushered in the 1990s. Sadly for Maggie, the smoke and mirrors of her tenure had run out of tricks.
1990 also ushered in the Grey Man, John Major.
I've already mentioned John Major on my blog, but safe to say, his tenure was the start of the professional management class and the job-creation scheme that was the NVQ system.
Financially clueless, under Major we had Black Wednesday as he kept the pound nailed to the ERM for way too long as the Likes of George Soros hammered it and the government threw billions into propping it up.
The Major premiership felt like freewheeling a bicycle downhill after the furious pedalling of the Thatcher era.
But at least we did the right thing and successfully freed Kuwait under Major. However, I suspect the success was set up and virtually guaranteed by Thatcher's regime.
Major continued to sell off assets, famously British Rail under his tenure.
Then came Tony Blair...
Tony the traitor, Tony the War criminal to a not insignificant minority.
Tony took us into war in the Balkans, took us into war in Afghanistan and Iraq. Tony borrowed billions and his policies inflated house prices in order for people to feel richer.
All the while, the country still declined. He opened the floodgates for Eastern Europeans to come into the UK and provide cheap labour, so people could feel richer. And to rub the noses of the right in diversity, apparently.
Tony also changed the law. Double jeopardy went, so the authorities could keep prosecuting you for the same crime. They could effectively bankrupt you with lawfare. Rather than do it right, he allowed the Police to become sloppy, inefficient and politicised.
He introduced the supreme court. A court that had supremacy over a democratically elected government. Basically killing democracy, because then what's the point of s democratically elected government, if it can't enforce the will of the people?
As I said, Blair took us into Afghanistan and Iraq, decades-long armed forces commitments that cost billions.
People felt richer for a while. But it wouldn't last. The rate of borrowing couldn't last, the rate of spending couldn't last. We couldn't maintain an armed conflict on two fronts.
The writing was eventually on the wall, so Blair handed over to Brown.
Gordon Brown, who sold the gold reserves at the bottom of the market.
Gordon Brown, who bailed out the banks in 2008, with our money.
Gordon Brown, who thought we were all bigots.
Yeah, a disastrous premiership.
Then we had the Tory/LibDem coalition.
Oh, my God. Yet more decline, marked by the rise of political correctness, the idea of green policies and basically giving up on any idea of saving the nation.
And this is probably the time of the rise of luxury beliefs, like climate change and Trans ideology.
And there we stayed for 14 years, under the Tories for the most part.
14 years of increasing immigration and reducing spending. Austerity caused by the Bank Bailout and the repayments required to pay back the sum we borrowed to achieve it, coupled with now accepting the whole world into the UK to offset the hideous GDP figures that we would have seen without it. A disastrous cocktail that was bound to end up in the morass we have now, where people expect a government to at least attempt to fix the country, or make it better.
We're now in the position fewer and fewer taxpayers are being asked to pay a larger and larger share of their earnings to prop up an unsustainable situation going forward.
The thing is, politicians haven't been honest with us for 50 years or more, haven't been able to make it better for 50 years or more. We don't have an Empire that props up the mother country, the EU is as badly in the hole after Germany spent all it's treasure on reunification.
We are in a doom spiral, and have been for 50 years. It was managed well for probably the first 20 years, but the seventies halted that and the Thatcher years only stayed positive thanks to asset-stripping the country.
This is the result of 50 years of managed decline.
We will eventually hit rock bottom, but I don't think it will be long now. I have visions of the end of this country. It's a civil war, with the country split into various factions: haves, have-nots, Christians, Muslims,
Those wealthy enough will leave, those that are not will be left to fight over the scraps.
Victory depends on factors, not least of which would be what external sponsors get involved. For instance if the militant Islamic countries sponsor the Islamic faction in the UK, then without the support of the rest of the West and a determination and stomach to eradicate the Islamic extremists with extreme prejudice, the UK will become an Islamic country.
Nothing of what I've seen of the "Liberal" West fills me with the confidence that the UK will be saved, come the great upheaval.
Government needs to be honest with people. It needs to let us know what went on in the past, where we are now and from there, with an honest basis, we can build a robust plan for the future.
Otherwise we have more of the same until it all come crashing down into a morass, a pit of chaos, where the country splits into warring factions.
I'm nearly dead, so most likely it won't affect me. Dying a couple of years early? Meh.
To teh rest of you: Good luck. You'll need it.
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