How do you create work in a country whose production industries are dying or long gone?

Is it only me who is not so quiety panicking about the debt this country is in?

Perhaps the new government has, by coming out with guns blazing, got me to talking about things I have been thinking about for ages. I did used to write about them but nobody seemed that concerned..or other concerns were more important to them. No crime but the 'ostrich' years are over.

In some ways I respect the new government for 'SAYING' it is going to be responsible and for seeming to take, at the moment, action to resolve the debt problem with it's first emergency budget due and already attempting to clear £6 billion of the debt but that is just a piddle in a massive ocean and where is the other £144 billion to be found from?

The notion of that kind of money is beyond me...particularly as I have always thought the money market is based on little substance and actually alot of notional money seems to have been moving around (heaven knows where or why). Actually, to me it is all notional rather than substancial. It certainly doesn't seem to bare any significance to anyone's life until there comes a point where debt has to be paid back...because who are 'the national we' to be paying it back to?

And then...it all gets very scary indeed because, you have to look at the hows and that means the country's capacity to do so.

Will a massive cut in public spending clear that amount of debt? I don't think it will in itself. If I put the argument about how necessary public services are to one side (because surely everyone believes there should be a public sector of some kind or other) and look at the money...I don't believe that level of debt will be cleared....and the bigger issue is ..how are we to sustain when alot of our production industries are in decline, or gone?

I was actually contemplating this notion of a 'big society' and wondering if I could sustain within work because in spite of my scepticism, I would like to be part of a society that does care, does work together and is 'better'. However, on a personal basis, I know that I would not cope nor would employers and other employees cope with me or for those who believe that illness is not all that a person is....how 'we' would cope with with my illness because, as yet, I am unable to be 'consistent' or maintain a level of coping that would fit with conventional work environments. Could start to talk about flexible work....working from home etc but as a society we haven't come that far yet. Maybe we will get there but before we get there we need to have work opportunities and lots of them...and unless I am completely oblivious to what is actually happening the work isn't there and companies are still closing down on a daily basis.

I don't see the growth of new industries...and not on a scale to replace the old and I am not sure quite what a'Big Society' means in realilty. Is it something like modern China? Because how can we compete with that? Do we want to be like that?

I am not clever enough to comprehend all this in a way that doesn't confuse me or stop me getting headaches but I do have to wonder at consistent governments who have allowed the financial sector to be so greedy...possibly encouraged it..who knows?????

Maybe the financiers pull the strings? Hmmm. Nosebleed stuff