Debts & Loans

After this week's pre-budget announcement we have seen the emergence of new old Labour, but how new or old is it? All of the better fiscal policy announcements were about finance, propping up the economy, propping up business etc, and not because it is going in the right moral direction for a fairer society. In a rather patronising way, we are asked to spend our way out of recession; but debt disempowers people.

We should be saying clear your debts if you can, especially credit cards and loans, in order to feel freer in your own lives to make better choices for yourself and your family. In doing so we will pave the way for a stronger society that has a different attitude to debt as well as giving good guidance to our kids. When you have so much personal debt and the resulting associated problems, it is very hard to see the larger issues around you; you feel you are already drowning.



For many years - a legacy of the Thatcher years - many of us have felt nothing can change, but now there is a feeling that things can be different all around the country. The question is how. How do we inform people that you can have a more caring society, with the best schools and healthcare? That every child should be considered equally and no elderly person should be poor. That credit should not be a given right. How will everyone believe that each one of us has a responsibility to help the whole of society? That we should pay more taxes to ensure life generally is better for all of us, and not to pay off huge government debt arising from their policies? How do we create a society where the impoverished artist is as respected as the entrepreneur, the nurse as much as the doctor, or the ordinary worker as much as the businessman?



These are some of the questions I feel we should ask and answer now - otherwise, what have we really learned from our collective behaviour over the last decade of Labour rule?