You just lost £410 bailing out Greece!

by Harvey Jones on 10 May 2010  |  36 comments
Tweet

Alistair Darling just handed over £10 billion of British taxpayers’ money to Greece. That’s £410 per taxpayer!

My, aren’t you a generous bunch? I am sooo impressed by your largesse. No sooner had you heard the Greeks were having a few difficulties settling their bar bill, than you dipped into your pockets to help them out.

How noble. How munificent.

And it wasn’t small change, either. Collectively, we have just dished out at least £10 billion to support those thrifty, hard-working Greeks. The total cost of our national whip-round could amount to a mighty £13 billion.

This would mean every single man, woman and child in this country has just handed over £217 each to bail out Greece. Since the money is coming from our taxes, that works out as £410 per income taxpayer.

Well done you.

It’s only money

What do you mean, you didn’t know? Weren’t you asked? Have you only just discovered what you’ve done? Well let me fill you in on some of the details.

Recent question on this topic

• ckm4328 asks:

  Is the election result an absolute disaster for our economy?

  • 
    JoeEasedale answered "In truth, with all 3 parties refusing to face the debt crisis and the age of austerity we all face,..."
  • 
    ckm4328 answered "My rather dire prediction is that Con/lib government will not work. Labour will then form..."
  • Read more answers

I’ll assume you’ve heard that Greece has spent itself into oblivion, and is asking everybody else to pick up the tab. After a lethal spot of dithering, the EU has finally responded with a £624 billion rescue package aimed at stopping the contagion before it engulfs Portugal, Spain, Italy and any other country who were daft enough to think the Greeks could share the same currency as the Germans.

Luckily for us, we don’t have to contribute to the total rescue package (although if the Lib Dems had got their way over the euro, we would). But we are being forced to chip into a £95 billion “stabilisation mechanism”, which will underwrite loans taken out by all 27 vulnerable EU states. That means we are still paying for the implosion of the euro, even though we wisely snubbed the single currency ourselves.

And despite the fact that at 12% of GDP, our budget deficit is actually the worst in Europe, including, um, Greece.

A wee dram

Today’s £13 billion gratuity is probably Alistair Darling’s parting shot as Chancellor. After new Labour’s debt binge, which has left us with an annual budget deficit of £163 billion and total national debt of £2.2 trillion, I like to think of this as one for the road.

Cheers, Alistair.

To be fair, his hands were apparently tied under a Lisbon Treaty clause that strips Britain of its veto in exceptional circumstances. And without the bailout, the subsequent global market meltdown would cost us all a lot more money in the longer run. Let’s just hope it’s enough. We can’t afford to save Europe again.

That money was mine!

But I can’t be rational about this for long, especially when I think how I could have spent my share of the bailout. This morning, Apple sent me an e-mail asking if I want to pre-order an iPad. They start at £429. I sensibly decided that was a luxury I couldn’t afford, only to discover Alistair Darling had already put me down for a similar sum to the Greeks, a nation that feels entitled to torch its own capital city if anybody suggests they have to work beyond age 53.

Britons who are scrimping to cover their mortgage or pay their council tax bill will feel even more aggrieved. What’s the point of managing our money, when our leaders are so profligate on our behalf?

Beware Greeks demanding gifts

Never mind, nothing you can do about it now. It’s a done deal. At least we can feel good about our own big-heartedness, and bask in the eternal gratitude of our European neighbours, particularly the Greeks.

What do you mean, what gratitude?

More: Is the election result a complete disaster for our economy? | What the hung parliament means for house prices