Hypocrite much?

Without trying to sound too up myself, I’ve always agreed that drastic cuts to the country’s budget need to be taken to avoid us falling further into debt. It’s clear- as David Cameron himself analogised before his party was voted in (sort of)- it’s like your credit card bill. You pay your debt off before its too big to handle.

Recently, however, my opinion has changed. It all started with the decision to raise university tuition fees from ‘already expensive’ to ‘ridiculously overpriced’.  Then the icing on the cuts cake (a supermarket own brand sponge cake in the reduced to clear section, of course) came when the government requested that the British Council axe the language teaching assistantship scheme- which 2000 language students rely on for their compulsory year abroad. This, of couse, included myself, and while the decision on its fate is not yet confirmed, there’s not a lot of hope.

This led to me thinking irrationally spiteful thoughts about the government, intertwined with mild expletives and words like ‘rich tories’, ‘elitism’ and ‘fat cats’. But then I stopped and realised what a hypocite I was being.

It was easy to be all high and mighty and agree with drastic cuts to funding, but when it actually affected me (in what, let’s face it, is quite a minor way) my opinion suddenly changed.

I still agree with lots of the cuts, even if I don’t agree with where they all fall. But we can’t beat about the bush- we’re in a mess and we need to get out of it. We just need to deal with it in the fairest way possible, so that as much as possible, everybody, regardless of wealth and privilege,  is given a fair deal.

Advertisement