@knarf
"We call it austerity in the UK"
No, you call it austerity. Where sane people live, the UK bunglement's actions of spending £100 billion each and every year more than they raise in tax revenues is rightly regarded as insane profligacy that can only end in tears. If you want real austerity, go to Greece, and even there, with one in four of all workers unemployed, and one in two of all young people unemployed, they are still only managing to balance the budget (which is why they keep on needing new international loans to repay existing loans).
So for every one of the UK's 30m taxpayers, they're going to have to pay the interest on £50k of debt each year (probably forever), and your "austerity" is adding £3k a year to each individual's personal allocation.
Biting the hand that feeds IT
