Where did it all go wrong?
Bubble — By WalesHome on September 1, 2010 7:00 am
"My smile is a lid on a scream" - Bet Lynch
IT’S 2015 and Labour has won again – just – in Wales while in Westminster the Conservatives still lead a national coalition, albeit refashioned after the surprise election of the previous year. The 2011 WAG coalition government is now a memory and Carwyn Jones, saved from the chop by a last minute surge in support, takes control of a Labour majority government in Wales for only the second time.
But it’s a tough time to be in charge. The triple-dip recession feels like it will never end. Yes, there was a recession and high inflation followed by steeper deflation. But the biggest pain was felt by the huge ranks of unemployed.
Let’s look back. Until mid 2011 things were looking OK. The Bank of England’s Monetary Policy Committee decided a gentle rise in interest rates to 1% was both prudent and appropriate, along with a strong hint that there would be no further increases for six months.
Chancellor Ken Clarke (Oh, didn’t you know? Yes, poor George… no one would have guessed it would end like THAT) was the calm controlling hand behind a slight easing of the hard public sector cuts that appeased the unions and averted strikes.
But the jobs weren’t coming. Even worse, the citizens were leaving. The London hotel trade was desperately short to cheap staff as the thousands of young Australians, South Africans and Eastern Europeans chose the Middle-East states and the Far East rather than the battered UK.
In Wales, the number of employees in farming and fishing overtook manufacturing during 2012 for the first time since the Industrial Revolution. Unemployment reached 18% and 50% for 18-21 year olds. Wales’ major export is now water to England.
Political extremism is creeping up. A newly resurgent hard-left and hard-right began picking up council seats and the BNP just missed out on a South East Wales regional seat to add to the one it got in 2012 when an Assembly Member defected. He still sits alone in the Siambr, though his supporters pack out the gallery for his interventions.
But the trigger which sent the UK into an economic recession was the rating agency move in July 2012. An unprecedented decision to simultaneously downgrade the AAA rating from France, Belgium, Italy, Spain and UK caused the UK Government to make two momentous decisions. First, all UK universities would be “sold” to Samsung. Second, that all public sector pensions would be reduced immediately by 60% for those earning the equivalent of the average wage. At the time, the average wage was £30,000 – such was the pace of inflation. Little did we know that deflation would quickly reduce this to £20,000.
This led to a white-collar revolution, where hundreds of retired doctors and teachers refused to watch the BBC (whose funding was linked to viewing figures, updated hourly). Average prices are £100,000 for houses, and the remaining squalid flats in Cardiff bay are no-go areas for the police. An apple costs £2.
In Wales, from 2012 to 2014 a mass migration from the Cardiff, Swansea and Newport (although, by that time, most people referred to Newport as “outer Cardiff”) to Mid Wales saw the first increases in house prices in five years. Crime and drug-use was rising, some parts of Gwent were known as New Mexico as drug cartels based their operations close to the M4. The real Mexico had been at war with USA for 18 months as the war-on-drugs had turned literal.
In schools, the take-up of Latin and Genetics overtook French and English Literature. The use of Welsh dropped to below 1% in Wales, with an enclave of Pontcanna, based around a new walled community administered from the Cameo Club. Chapter Arts Centre was moved by a giant helium balloon under cover of darkness into the enclave. The Riverside Farmers market has been moved to St Fagans.
So, it’s now 2015 and Cardiff is twinned with the Taiwan city of Cidu. You’ll remember that in 2008 Cidu was a district of Keelung, with a population of just 5,500. The Cardiff population has just voted to abolish the post of elected mayor after the incumbent became the eighth senior politician in Wales to be jailed for corruption in the past year.
Life-expectancy is dropping as NHS waiting lists grow. There remain armed guards at all the Welsh hospitals to control access and medicines supply. The use of prescription (and non-prescription) anti-depressants is rife.
Wales is getting older at both ends. Young people are leaving – some for Europe’s remaining success stories (Germany, Turkey and Poland) but most are heading to India. Old people are everywhere. Back in 2010 the ratio of workers per pension was between 2.5 and 4 to 1. Today it’s heading to half of that.
The need to integrate health and social care which was not tackled in the early part of the century is now beyond hope. There is a new black-market in private health-care. But it’s much closer to back-street abortions than to Harley Street.
It’s the speed of decline that shocks people the most. They knew hard times were coming, they just didn’t expect to be the ones to bear the brunt of it. Just like the Great Depression or Wall St Crash, personal realities were transformed virtually overnight. The hopelessness is so complete you can almost taste it. The sheer powerlessness of the individual is sickening. Is it any wonder that suicide has been the most recorded cause of death amongst the under 60s for the past three years?
So who’s to blame? Everybody else, is the common answer. That’s if any answers make sense any more. To most of us, nothing has made sense for several years.
Tags: Economy, fiction
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11 Comments
Still laughing at Pontcanna’s walled enclave, brilliant! Right, am off to learn how to fish…
I do not really think Orwell’s got too much competition from the article above. This would be my slightly more optimistic vision for the state of things in 2020.
- We have finished grieving over the fact that manufacturing has gone now, not just in Wales, but all over the UK, if not Western Europe. We have adapted and now spend time aggressively expand the marketing strategy for selling those fish and farming products, and the water, so that Welsh fish, farming products and water become the natural choice for the whole of Western Europe,or at least in the top five. You can sit down in many of Europe’s top restaurants to find Scottish salmon on the menu, so why not Welsh fish? And as for the whisky, I had a choice of 15 different Scottish whiskies in a Bulgarian supermarket the other day and as a visitor to Wales, all the men in my family now get a bottle of Welsh whisky for Christmas, which incidentally is normally gone by February, showing that it can be sold outside of Wales? Quality and Luxury products are still selling, even in this economic climate. You have the history and heritage to make claims to that quality and luxury?
- The current investment in the universities are ranked top ten in the world and have patents for money making engineering, science, telecommunications and IT applications which bring in millions of pounds for Wales and jobs for some of those 18-21 years old citizens, you mention. But we have not forgotten the vital importance of what art and philosophy means to a nation.
- We have fully capitalised on the international sporting events here, and acknowledge that they bring their wives and girlfriends and systematic capitalisation on the spending potential of these events is organised.
- We have aggressively expanded the marketing strategy to market Wales to the World. Most Europeans I speak to are aware of Scotland, but not Wales and there are not nearly enough Americans, Japanese nor Chinese seen wandering around the castles, hills and shores of these parts. Until we strike oil down Barry beach, increased levels of tourism would provide temporary labour, and self esteem building activities again for the 18-21 years olds you refer to. It is easy to take for granted what you have at home.
- We have reached a point where we spend less time and energy fighting about the Welsh language and all children living in Wales understand that a language clearly means more than just the words. Yes, and whilst we’re at it, we expose all Welsh children to Chinese, what with it being the language of the future and all that.
- All NHS complainers spend three months observing health services in other countries with no NHS in order to appreciate that we are all a bit spoilt here and come to realise it is better to have an NHS with waiting lists, rather than no NHS at all. It is better to wait, rather than die because you can not afford to live, which simultaneously confirms the need for the NHS as public.
- A scheme is embedded in all educational programmes, where those 18-21 year olds spend time and provide support with parts of society outside their immediate life experience. Organic rehabilitation.
- We have realised that integrating health and social care would be wrong. Each profession keeps the other in check and most importantly approaches the service user/patient differently. Medical profession only see the individual and actually dispense the high number of anti-depressants, Social Care tries to address the context in which that depression may take place, and the two need to be kept separate. A doctor is never going to have the time to address the issue of why a sixteen year old boy may chose to join the English defence league, where as a social worker potentially may.
That’s obviously just a quick sketch in response to the tone of the article, which no doubt will be treated as somewhat naive and irrelevant, but we have to keep imagination alive, or we stay stuck in an internal cycle of negativity, and that can never be understood as being good for productivity? The main point is, that you can actually chose the way you want to perceive the world, and for me, this article does not describe the reality, I know that I hope, Wales can be?
Businesses and thus the economy feeds on optimism, and this piece flies in the face of this.
And anyway, since Wales is in a much better financial position than the UK (deficit and debt )….this article might be the best advert for independence for Wales. Even though the article is as far fetched as shait from Chine, it highlights that the UK is bankrupt………time to get off this sinking ship – or to have a stronger voice for Wales (at least)
Nightmarish! Newport as “outer Cardiff”. •shudder•
Where we might be if we continue with what we are doing is very valid analysis. “Enjoyed” reading it very much.
I guess the game changers are the events or movements you can’t predict with any reliability and how they might play out is equally hard to predict.
Wylfa power station makes Anglesey a radioactive playground
Crass for 2012 stirs UK young people into action
New significantly more addictive synthetic drug made from soap and red bull powered by a new music scene hits Wales causing a crime wave and deaths.
Herring Gull flu kills 100′s of 1000′s
Westminister is bombed killing all sitting MP’s except Dennis Skinner who was at home recovering from Herring Gull flu
Google relocates its global operation to Aberaeron
But Ken Clark becomes Chancellor of Exchequer? That really is a surreal one.
” … The use of Welsh dropped to below 1% in Wales, with an enclave of Pontcanna, based around a new walled community administered from the Cameo Club.”
Oh, I was waiting for the gratuitous dig at the Welsh language.
Maybe the author could spend some time in Penygroes, Llangefni, Blaenau Ffestiniog, Crymych and other such places than enjoying the coffee in Pontcanna.
though, there’s nothing wrong with Poncanna either
El Dafydd El – I don’t think that the 1% Welsh language line was gratuitous, or even anti-Welsh language – I suspect that if the piece had said that Cymraeg was the dominant language in Wales by 2015 then it would have been taken as a contributing factor for the appocalyptic scenario that we painted. So stay cool and hang loose, buddy.
You’re right though – Penygroes, Llangefni, Blaenau Ffestiniog, Crymych as well as Rossett and Gorseinon are unrepresented on WalesHome – so if anyone out there from these towns wants to write something….. you are very welcome and please get in touch.
El Dafydd El, we were worried the piece wouldn’t get comments so injected the Pontcanna line at editing stage. We almost put in the referendum and a bit on Welsh identity too
If it were to be this good we’d all welcome it!
I wonder if the children of Pontcanna and the environ’s Welsh speakers will still face institutionalised discrimination in the Cardiff school system in 2015 as they do today? Will this still be promoted by Welsh Labour as it is today?
I’m afraid that hate speech about Welsh-speakers as an urban, wealthy minority in Cardiff has policy implications (attacks on S4C as “crachach”, no access for Welsh-speaking children in Pontcanna/Canton to decent educational resources, ignoring poverty in Welsh-speaking communities). But then hate speech normally does.
Nothing against the Pontcanna joke as a joke (which is here as a throw-away line so we can let it go), as long as we understand what the wider narrative is.
Local people in and around Church Village are already saying that when the bypass opens on September 7th the area will become ‘outer Cardiff’ – it’s happening..