Monday 13 February 2023

Only a dozen years of #Tory government and the UK is becoming a failed state

I've just been reading this editorial article in the Guardian about the horror that is happening in Lebanon. The ruling class - the business and political class - have run the country into the ground. Lebanon has been trashed and the middle and working classes are really suffering. Its worth quoting at length what is happening. According to the article:

"Lebanon’s problems are longstanding. Corruption, violence and incompetence dogged the years following the civil war; Iran, Saudi Arabia and others duel for influence via their proxies. Political jockeying and outright violence play out within as well as between sectarian communities. But the challenges have dramatically worsened in recent years. Those at the top essentially ran a giant Ponzi scheme – propping up the currency by attracting dollars through absurd interest rates for investors."

And:

"Parents are sending their children to orphanages because they cannot feed them. A growing number of citizens have resorted to armed robbery as the only way to extract their own deposits (now vastly reduced in real terms) from banks when they desperately need to pay for basic services such as healthcare."

Lebanon has become a failed state and its hard to see how the situation can be retrieved. The ruling class, who are not affected, have little incentive to resolve the situation. There have always been corrupt politicians in the pockets of corporations but since the advent of neoliberalism with Thatcher and Reagan in the early 1980s, things have become much worse.

The USA has become a virtual one party state with both Democrat and Republican politicians in the pay and pockets of oligarchs and corporations. One of the latest manifestations of this is the horrific rail crash in East Palestine, Ohio which released tons of toxic vinyl chloride into the atmosphere. People had warned this was an accident waiting to happen and called for train braking systems to be updated and made safer. The train companies lobbied the politicians to stop this happening and were successful. 

After a dozen years of Tory government the UK is heading in the same direction as Lebanon with the underfunding and undermining of public services such as the NHS and education, discharges of raw sewage into our rivers and disasters like Grenfell. Corruption is rife and there is a complete lack of respect for the welfare of citizens and their human rights. Of course what has happened in Lebanon couldn't happen here could it? Don't hold your breath!

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