The Uncivil War

Of course we all know about the English and American civil wars, but conflict occurs at all sorts of levels within society. Politics, court cases, domestic rows, terrorist attacks, street violence, and so on. At the moment, there is a particularly interesting struggle occurring between the providers of our welfare state and the recipients of it. What you might call a financial conflict.

As mentioned in my previous comments, central and local governments are now ringing every drop of taxation blood out of the employment sector to pay for cash strapped public services. 25 million full-time workers are effectively propping up a 70 million population with their income and business taxes. 

There are naturally many complications within this simplistic interpretation, as most people contribute taxes AND benefit from services at the same time. The question remains, however, whether this notional fairness is currently being converted into a much more polarised conflict between net contributers and net beneficiary groups. As one lady working in a school recently said.

"I don't know why we bother".

But here is the curve ball.

In a society where the old social contract idea of shared rights and responsibilities is at best shaky, new methods of financial redress have expanded to muddy the waters further. An example of this, may be our thriving 'compensation culture', where billions of pounds are being redistributed through the legal system to individuals and groups successfully claiming that their problems can be traced to the activities, or inactivities, of other individuals and groups.

The NHS, for instance, is apparently spending around 3 billion pounds a year on negligence payouts (source: AI Google).

The questions are indeed difficult.

And the answers, more so....

Just an opinion.