UNISONActive is an unofficial blog produced by UNISON activists for UNISON activists. Bringing news, briefings and events from a progressive left perspective.

Wednesday 21 September 2011

Austerity is causing economic destruction

Only the really, really smug use the phrase ‘I told you so’ and there is nothing joyous about being right in the context of a double dip recession: http://news.sky.com/home/business/article/16073633

UNISON and our comrades in the TUC have continually warned about the dangers of austerity packages biting too hard and fettering growth. It is obvious to a blind man on a galloping horse that if all countries across Europe stop spending than not only do we increase public sector based unemployment but we start to hit manufacturing and retail sectors. These in turn hit exports, create more job losses and lose tax revenues creating a spiral of misery.

The austerity measures are crippling economies across Europe. This is no longer a message from the left but from the traditional right. If Lagarde tells Osborne he is failing how can he callously continue to follow his failed economic policy?

The price of this man’s vanity will be once more 3 million unemployed in Britain. He is not the only offender.

It is rich for the Euro zone and the IMF to be dictating this failed approach of severe austerity across Europe’s failing economies. A good lesson could be taught to them all by Greece sticking two fingers up the single currency, going back to its own currency and once again planning for growth instead of half-hearted pandering to an already failed economic experiment.

Anna Rose