‘UK's annual budget for 2012 serves corrupt banking system’

The comment comes as the British finance minister, George Osborne, has unveiled the UK's annual budget for 2012 to the House of Commons, which he said is meant to maintain a tough austerity push.

This comes amid a slow economic recovery as official data show that the country’s budget deficit hit a record high in February.

Meanwhile, British protesters rallied outside the parliament against the tough austerity measures and the soaring unemployment rate.

Press TV has conducted an interview with professor of Binary economics Rodney Shakespeare from London to share his opinions on this issue.

The video also offers the opinions of two other guests: journalist and broadcaster, Max Keiser from Paris and National Co-Chair of Black Activists Rising against Cuts, Zita Holbourne from London.

The following is a transcript of the interview.

Press TV: Mr. Shakespeare next month the government will cut working family tax credit; in the public sector Brits will have to pay more for their pension; one activist that we spoke to here on Press TV put it plain and simple that families are being targeted.

What kind of impact will these measures have for the lower-income-generating families?

Shakespeare: Well, it will increase the stress; it will increase the tension. This budget is old paradigm sclerotic thinking, given by a smug complacent chancellor who is serving the interests of a corrupt banking system.

If you want to help the working people and the middle classes, you have to control the banks who are out of control, you have to stop them creating new money and stop them shoving the money into anything except the real economy.

You have to use a national bank interest free creation. That money is going into the real economy and it’s spreading. It’s as Max Keiser said, any money creation at the moment is only going for the interests of the corrupt banks.

It has nothing to do with the provision of the jobs of ordinary people. This government is in fact just serving the interests of the banks. It has no analysis and no understanding of the debts that have built up so they’re out of control.

This is the same right the way throughout Europe and the Western system and the money is in places which has nothing to do with the real economy and its spreading.
So I’m afraid come April particularly after the new financial year public sector jobs are going to be in terrible trouble.

Press TV: Mr. Shakespeare more spoils for the rich and nothing left for the poor, is this how the British deficit should be met?

Shakespeare: No it’s not. The people who are trained to educate it are there, the land is there, the farm is there, the resources are there, the technology is there and the knowledge is there.

All the factors are there to produce a sufficient income for ordinary people but the way the system works it’s essentially about a sucking up all the time of wealth for this tiny- it’s actually 10 percent and then in particular to the 1 percent.

You’ve got to overthrow the system, revolt against it and chalk it up and in any case the collapse which is coming and is getting worse is going to in fact produce a cause for the overthrow of the system and the overthrow must include the use of national bank interest-free loans going out, paid back and being cancelled.

If you don’t do that ordinary people won’t have jobs, they won’t have income and you will not be able to take account of what is a huge technological shift as jobs are being smashed out in the new industries.

Osborne understands nothing- he is smug and complacent. His assumption is oh, stay as we are and it will all come back in some wonderful way into balance- it won’t.

Press TV: Mr. Shakespeare opposition politicians and trade unions have warned that austerity could prove counter-productive by raising unemployment and thereby the benefits bill as well.

Do you think that cutting spending and raising taxes too far and too fast in fact will backfire?

Shakespeare: It will backfire but if I may say something to the opposition and particularly to the UK unions, you’ve got to come, it’s no use just opposing this government because they have controlled the thinking in the universities.

And they control the thinking- the paradigm controls the thinking in the universities and the politicians and the bankers control everybody by bribery, blackmail, coercion and dirty tricks generally.

The unions have got to come forward with a new idea and that means they must do something which was done to the American authorities, was done in Australia, Canada and New Zealand with great success.

You use the national bank as you control the banks; you control them, you use the national bank interest-free supply for big capital projects, micro credits, small farms, small businesses, for spreading ownership in the medium and large co-operations.

For public capital projects like roads, you don’t have tolls on roads, for roads, canals or railways and you use that same mechanism for getting rid of national debt.

And if you don’t do that, the unions don’t do that. They have had it. They will be smashed politically by this government which will be controlling the intellectual high ground. The union has got to find a new way forward and push for it.

Press TV: Mr. Shakespeare your thoughts about the military dimension of the British government. What about the war in Afghanistan, many observers are calling this a saturated war, why not start allocating the money for other purposes, for example purposes that would ease the pinch on the masses and the lower class such as creating more jobs?

Shakespeare: In the West the military expenditure is absolutely huge; no one attempts to touch it. The USA spends nearly half of the world budget.

Going back to Max’s point this budget actually further erodes national sovereignty. It actually puts people into debt, not just for themselves, but for their children and for their grandchildren and as in Greece they are going to be debt serfs and debt peons for ever because you see this is ultimately about a financial global elite taking control over the whole world population.

So we do have to look at the wider issues, including the wider issues of ongoing war which is continuing all the time. So yes you can’t look at the British budget unless you consider the military escapees which are going on and the war and the control of the global elite as well.

VG/GHN