We've got excrement being poured into lakes, rivers and seas by water companies paying billions to their shareholders.
We've got a rail network outside the Home Counties that isn't fit for purpose.
We've got energy companies ripping us off even while the wholesale price of energy has tumbled.
We've seen politicians' cronies ripping us off for billions over PPE.
We've got new housing developments being snapped up by Chinese investors instead of being used for social housing.
We've got the poorest pensions in Western Europe, with old people forced to choose between food and fuel.
We've got a problem with getting treatment by the NHS, particularly mental health services.
Our armed forces could barely defend against united's attack.
We've seen money poured into London's infrastructure while the North has been denied investment for years.
These are all the things we could legitimately take to the streets over yet we're being told by those on the right, and their mouthpieces in the media, that people coming over in small boats, who are a fraction of the number of legal immigrants, are the cause of all our problems. Yes, we need to sort that out but it wouldn't be at the top of my list of demands.
All of what we have seen over the last couple of weeks (and possibly over the last 12 months or so) are to do with how people are reacting to economic decline.
Before the financial crisis we had a huge economic boom driven by a housing bubble and the creation of lots of debt by the big banks. But that turned out to be unsustainable and we inevitably ended up with a financial crisis - but that didn’t just blow up the banks, it blew up our entire economic model. Suddenly stocks and house prices and debt weren’t constantly increasing because the banking system was broken, and the real economy had been based on the banking system.
Some were saying we needed to increase investment to get the economy going again, but the tories were elected and they didn’t want to do that - they wanted to continue with the finance-driven growth model that had blown up after 2008. So they cut public spending and pumped tons and tons of money back into the financial system which got the whole system going again, but created a divided economy. If you were wealthy - if you had a house and shares - then you would get wealthier, because the government was propping up financial markets. And that’s basically what drove our economy for the decade after the crisis.
But for everyone else - like 50% of people (and possibly more) - things just got worse and worse and worse. They got poorer, their jobs got longer and harder, the public services they relied on started to break down.
Our previous government ignored this for a long time because they only cared about what was happening in financial markets. But then the cost of living crisis hit and the whole model imploded all over again.
The upshot is we’ve been getting poorer and weaker as an economy since 2008 - but that’s been disguised by the growth in financial and housing markets. And now, everyone is finally realising that we’ve been getting poorer for ages and they need someone to blame.
So, rather than fixing the problem they created, politicians are trying to encourage people to blame migrants and people on benefits for the fact that they’re poor, which is leading to the growth of the extreme right. Lots of people are very angry at how bad things have become, and they’re taking it out on the people even poorer and weaker than them and this is how we've ended up having a 2024 summer of far right rallies and rioting.
