Where are Dave and George?

None of the forecasts coming from the OBR, DWP or the Treasury make any sense to me at all. Several knowledgeable people I know, when they run the extant figures through their models, see a much bleaker future for the UK, i.e., over the next ten or fifteen years fractional economic growth (< 1%) , unemployment remaining in the millions (possibly approaching or even exceeding 3 million next year), falls on trend of overvalued property by another 40% or so, more borrowing, more cuts, more poverty, more homelessness, less social housing, longer waiting lists for every public service (NHS included)… and so on and so forth… basically more of everything unpleasant and bad.

Another thing that looks as though it is going to happen is a shake out of white collar clerical and administrative posts as the internet becomes ubiquitous and knowledge based software and computer systems displaces skilled and professional workers. Miliband's "squeezed middle" looks set to shrink massively as a demographic in much the same way as skilled manual trades and jobs diminished over the last thirty years or so as the country's manufacturing base eroded. Millions of the aspirational middle class look set to find out what it's like to become "downwardly mobile" over the next decade or two.

Iain Duncan Smith's Work Programme and David Freud's bitingly harsh welfare changes will not "force" the "feckless" into jobs or reduce "welfare dependency" in any significant of noticeable way. Cutting and capping Housing Benefit will NOT lead to any lowering of rents in the private sector or encourage tenants to "negotiate" lower rents for themselves by means of dialogue with their landlords. As far as the Work Programme goes it now seems inevitable that almost every provider organisation, mostly private profit-making companies rather than the "Big Sky" charities originally envisaged, will year on year fail to meet targets set by the government as far as getting the unemployed into sustainable work is concerned and will, unless their current contractual obligations are renegotiated and DWP expectations are slashed, face having their contracts terminated. The explosion of activity and expansion in the private sector with concurrent creation of millions of decent sustainable work is NOT going to happen. It really, really isn't. 

I could go on but I haven't got the time.

Things look set to get much worse without getting any better for the foreseeable future.