Austerity

For the last five years, Britain has been under the hammer of 'Austerity'. In its name, wages have been frozen, benefits have been slashed and public spending squeezed. The pain of a financial crisis caused by bankers and speculators has been borne by ordinary people all over the country - and by the poor and disabled most of all. Yet this has not been born of necessity, argues Kerry-Anne Mendoza, better known as the blogger Scriptonite. Rather, it has been an opportunity seized upon by neoliberals to pursue their decades-long project to shrink government and put Britain's most cherished public resources - including the NHS and state schools - into private hands. Under cover of an economic emergency, the social democracy that we took for granted is being systematically dismantled and our basic freedoms are under threat. Now with new material: 10 Economic Myths, written by New Internationalist co-editors Dinyar Godrej and David Ransom.