Official: Britain is 22nd rate
By Frank Noakes
LONDON — Thatcherism, the rule of the market and large scale privatisation have had one major triumph — the rich have gotten richer. Judged by any other standard, Tory ideology has reduced Britain to near ruin.
The statistics prove what the politicians deny. This year's World Competitiveness Report spells out Britain's absolute decline among the world's top 22 industrialised nations.
The survey, conducted for the World Economic Forum and published on June 21, found that in a wide range of areas Britain languished on or near the bottom of the ladder. On a scale of 22, Britain's position is in: industrial output, 22nd; "domestic economic strength", 19th; funding of research and development, 21st; private funding of business research and development, 22nd; science and technology, 13th; availability of skilled workers, 22nd; number of engineers, 22nd; education, 20th; competence of managers, 19th.
British people, the report states, have the lowest enthusiasm and energy of the entire industrialised world.
The British government has recently applied for European funds to support the Scottish Highlands and Islands and also Merseyside, which now qualify among the most economically depressed regions in Europe. One in every four of Europe's poor is resident in Britain.
The army of unemployed numbers over 4 million. Almost one in four employees works part time; this usually means loss of income, pension entitlements, industrial protection and job security.
Economist Will Hutton says, "For middle-class professionals, accustomed to self-employment, the new world presents the opportunity to carve out new careers and lifestyles. But for those less well educated and remunerated, it means powerlessness and reduced living standards ... self-employment for
construction workers is a very different experience to that of self-employed tax consultants."
After 14 years of market economics under Margaret Thatcher and John Major, the poorest 10% have suffered a real decline in living standards of 14%. Nearly one in four Britons, including 4 million children, live on half the average income. The poorest half of the population share a quarter of the country's income, as opposed to one-third of it in 1979, a government department survey has found.
Yet social security minister Peter Lilley says, incomprehensibly, "The figures do not show the poor are getting poorer".
Britain's poor, always comprising pensioners, have recently expanded by 8.5 million to include the unemployed and the self-employed. Meanwhile, a further 100,000 construction workers are set to swell the ranks of Britain's poor by the end of 1994; this will bring to 500,000 the number of jobs lost in that industry in a five-year period.
It is little wonder then that John Major, the inheritor and continuer of Thatcherism, has become the most unpopular prime minister since such statistics were first recorded in 1938.