Economics of The Village

Austerity – that self-serving, miserable misconception of basic economics is predictably a dismal failure, producing a bleakness for the vast majority of people that would appeal to the creators of the woebegone TV series ‘The Village’.
The selves that austerity serves are the rich, the powerful and the influential - and of course their acolytes, sponsors and hirelings who, knowing that their lords and masters itch to get their doctrinaire knives into benefits for the less well off, will readily tell them that savage cuts for some are the way to produce growth.
The chancellor and his cronies also suffer a selective historical amnesia that blanks out the record of the national and international experience of the 1930s, which malign forgetfulness dooms all but the privileged few to relive it, in part or in whole. It also blanks out the policies that would put the country on the road to recovery as developed by John Maynard Keynes.
We’ve heard much about the government’s wish to re-do school syllabi yet again regardless of educational merit. But one thing that has become abundantly clear is that there is a strong case for teaching economic history in schools – and in induction programmes for chancellors.
We’ve also heard a former chancellor saying that the country should leave the EU. Of course this couldn’t be anything to do with his friends in the banks - perish the thought. I look forward to hearing what the leaders of productive industry say to this in view of the loss of their markets and because the only banks that are serving the community today are the food banks.
I understand that amazingly there is to be a second series of ‘The Village’ which to be true to its cheerless and despairing tone should miss out the more upbeat 1920s and go straight to the depressed 1930s. Perhaps the people who are writing this stuff are the same ones producing the government’s economic policy – the effects are pretty much the same.
New scriptwriters needed all round!