Monday 17th March

Part of my work used to involve writing cheques.  The first thing you had to do was write the date.  Every year I would start our writing the ….of January and then by force of habit write down last years date. Then have to start again.  Now almost all payments are electronic so you don’t even have to remember what the year is.  Days speed away so fast – we are already over half way through March, and those months are knocked down with increasing rapidity too.  The years?  Heaven help us, the years are racing ahead even faster than ever.  It is already 2015.  Five years ago I shuddered to think of how the country would be after five years of Austerity.  Five years have come and gone (almost) and of course most of us haven’t really been affected.  Yet.  The trick that George Osborne has played (actually two tricks) was to back-load most of the cuts so that they wouldn’t come into effect until 2015 – and so most of us wouldn’t notice them.  The second trick was of course not to even halve the deficit he inherited. He promised to eliminate it in one five year parliament, whereas he derided Labour for their more measured plan of halving it, which was of course what he actually ended up doing.  The Lib-Dems also chose to prop up the Tories because they would get rid of the deficit.  I suspect that, if as seems likely the Tories win the next election, or if even more likely they have to go again into Coalition with either the LibDems or UKIP, he again will promise to eliminate the deficit.  Actually it is scheduled to disappear by 2019, but that date, like the retirement age just gets pushed further and further into the future.

In fact I believe he isn’t really concerned about the deficit at all.  It is convenient when cuts to Benefits have to be justified, but who cares – as long as we can still borrow cheaply – and if by 2020 the deficit is still there, well all the more reason to vote Tory, because we all know that Labour spend more of your money etc:

And so the years speed by, and I will very soon find myself writing another blog about another new Labour leader trying to win again in 2020.  It seems we are in a pattern of Parties ruling for at least two, if not three terms.  Who knows what would have happened to Gordon Brown if the Financial crash of 2008 hadn’t happened.  Maybe he would have gone on for another five years. Politics, like Time itself is fickle, there is far more luck than judgement involved, and the years speed us all along far too quickly.