Wake up Britain find out how much is your debt hole!

Politics is a wonderful, crazy, infuriating thing. Any adult who does not have an interest in politics is in my mind suffering from a self imposed lobotomy, probably done with a knitting needle in a back room while watching soap TV and not giving a care about the results but having a hell of a good moan about it when they don't have money in their pocket to pay for their next cup of tea. Consequently lets move onto the next biggest thing facing the lobotomised community of the UK, it's the budget deficit.

The UK has a budget deficit fact. But not a lot of people know that, fact. A lot of people understand the UK is in debt but they really don't fully grasp the notion of how much and how this really has an affect on them. It's those pesky lobotomisers again you might say and possibly be right. Further when the government talks of deficit the definition of deficit doesn't hit home either. To make it clear, the deficit is the total value of all debt the UK has. How much? Well, the UK debt mountain or rather the UK debt hole stands at 1.6 trillion British pounds. Again what does this mean, what does a trillion look like in numbers?  Everyone knows what a million is but do they appreciate the enormity of a trillion? Such is the question.  Well I checked it up and one trillion is:

Yes, it has twelve zeros added to it. So the UK debt is:

£1,600,000,000,000

Yet in real terms it is 99.99% of the UK population still doesn't understand how much this is, the reason why is because it is not put into personal terms. So lets make it personal, lets make it very personal and imagine this debt was transferred to every single adult and child in the UK then what would the figure look like, per person? This means finding out the total population of the UK and then dividing it into this £1.6 trillion to give a personal debt level for each and every person.

The current population level as given by http://www.worldometers.info/world-population/uk-population/ is today slightly over 65 million people i.e.

65,280,902 UK population

So here is the math:

£1,600,000,000,000 / 65,280,902 = £25,509

Consequently at this moment in time every man, woman and child owes £25,509 of debt and if they were to pay this up right away we'd no longer be in recession and have a zero balance sheet. We could get all the services we wanted provided we were willing to pay the appropriate tax levels which supplies those services. More generally that everybody in some way was willing to work. Which might be difficult for some groups of people, especially those who are frail, infirm, disabled etc. Lets say we now adjust this figure and be generous to state the population who are unable to work is probably about 20 million. This is a very rough guestimate figure and it may be wrong. So making this adjustment the new revised personal debt level of all those who are able to work and should be contributing to society changes to this adjusted math:

£1,600,000,000,000 / 45,280,902 = £35,335

So there we are! This is the real debt of those people who can work in the UK and should be working and should be paying in order to move the deficit into the black rather than it be settled in the red. Yet were Job Bloggs to be approached in the street he would not accept this debt. Yet at the same time he would take help if he went into a NHS hospital needing an operation. He'd walk on the paths, use the roads, sit and wait for the fire brigade to come if his home was burning down and then arrange support from social services to look after a frail relative needing extra care.

Wake up Britain you are responsible for your debts.

So what does the future hold? This is a tough question to answer, because the number of variables are infinite. No country is an island, although technically Britain is an Island, we are global machines of trade and commerce and as such are also affected by those nations around us. Individually, we could emigrate to Germany which is probably the richest nation in the world and get guaranteed health care and social support through the rest of our lives. This option is only available while in Europe and though joking has actually an element of realism to it.

There is a saying which goes along the lines of, if you keep going on the path you are then you will end up where you are heading. With this in mind the UK's future would suggest a catastrophic bankruptcy of the nation and of living standards. In a few decades it could mean only the rich can get health care, only the rich can be buried, only rich can afford comfortable living conditions because quite frankly the rest of us are fucked.