There appears to be deep confusion amongst political journalists on what austerity is and why it is necessary.

As a child of the 1950s I was brought up on the concept. Before the usual suspects line up to shout, A-level Economics needs only need common sense; forget economic theory. If you continually spend more than you earn you will eventually go broke. It matters not whether you are an individual, family, small business or a country big or small. It is inevitable. The end can be postponed; deals can be struck; but the reckoning must come.

Politicians and journalists simply will not haul this in; they seem to think for a country there are some magic solutions. Yet in their hearts they know the truth; otherwise they and their own families would be destitute.

One particularly moronic Sky TV presenter pressed a rather-out-of-her-depth Conservative party spokeswoman to defend their austerity programme. He missed two rather important points, obvious to number-crunchers like me. There has been no austerity; the deficit is still over one trillion (>10^12) pounds and has been since these innumerate muppets took office.

The second simply asinine point that this Sky lemon made was that the electorate might be getting fed up with an economic prescription that not only had they not collected but had not even been made up. Where do they find these TV presenters? They are supposed to be our guardians. What erstwhile polytechnic shaped them what did they study? Who marked their exams? Who recruited them?

We lurch toward the abyss daily; the national debt is beyond the human imagination, but still we hear the siren call for more spending, always of course, in some noble cause; support as ever from public service broadcasting where public spending is a religion. Never has it been challenged, certainly not in my lifetime. Tax, borrow, print, soak the rich.

Even the new dumbed-down UKIP have joined the band wagon where serious economy has been replaced populism heralded by an ex tabloid journalist. Is there now no one in either politics or media who understands where this must end? News readers mouth their teleprompters typed in by work experience undergraduates that inflation is at an all time low and the economy is recovering. The electorate stare at the telly wondering why they are not sharing in this bonanza, why has it passed them by. Old age pensioners get no interest on their savings, no one can afford to fill up the car, electricity and gas bills have doubled, school and university fees are now outside the ability to pay of the upper middle class, never mind the artisan class in the north of England. Flat screen TV, fridges, mobile phones have not gone up. But how my heart bled the other day in a Cumbrian butcher’s shop when I watched a young man trying to buy a joint of beef for his family Sunday lunch.

Can there be anyone reading this, who does not have a young friend or family member to whom a house in any of our main cities is but a pipe dream? Is there a single investment manager who does not know what will happen to bonds or gilts when QE stops or interest rates go up? Can there be a housewife who believes her shopping basket has not doubled in cost in the last ten years?

Why is everyone going to Lidl and Aldi?

We expect politicians to be liars and cheats; it is what they do, which is why it makes no matter for whom you vote.

But when did the newspapers abandon us? Perhaps more importantly why?

Related posts:

Daniel Hannan’s Hollow Plea: Propping Up a Party Deserving of Oblivion Radical Solutions for the UK Economy: Cutting Spending, Repudiating Debt, and Unleashing Growth Radical Economic Reforms: Cutting Spending, Deregulation, and Returning to the Gold Standard More Empty Words on Growth Capitalism v Corporatism Labour’s Grovelling to Donald Trump: A Sight of Parasites at Work

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