Children of George Grenville

George Grenville, appointed Prime Minister by George III is believed to have triggered American Revolution through his intransigent insistence in imposing stamp duties on colonies so that Americans share amount British spent on their defense, According to Hugh Brogan in ‘The Longman History of the United States of America’ Grenville was logical, accurate and overwhelmingly well informed. In the present context, but for his greediness he would have made an excellent civil servant. Again according to Hugh Brogan, he had a horror of debt and immediately set about reducing vast liabilities accrued during the seven year war. He recklessly starved army and navy. And to cover an estimated cost of ₤372,774 for supporting forces in North America, instead of borrowing, he decided to tax colonies. Imaginative borrowing on the premise of wealth accrued from North America would have richly compensated the investment. But Grenville consumed by the fetish of debt reduction and the right of parliament to tax colonies went through the process that eventually ended in complete independence of colonies. How does it all become relevant in the present context? David Cameron and George Osborne with the help of latter day charlatan Nick Clegg have been with vulgar zeal doing everything to make lives of poor in Britain miserable in the name of debt reduction. They called themselves as children of Margaret Thatcher; their deeds seem to be more in common with George Grenville. The financial crisis were result of unregulated greed of financial institutes and with those back in ugly profiteering, Cameron and Osborne are punishing people who in the first place were rather victims not the culprits. The zeal with which they are depriving future generations their chance of education and other opportunities is more in keeping with Prince Charles once off the record remark that virtually translated into that high aspirations cannot be for everyone. In the making of a complete asymmetric society Tories have an ally in rabid media, who are doing everything within their prowess to destroy credibility of Liberal Democrats within the ruling coalition and to make them impotently powerless to stop further radical social engineering. A person of Vince Cable’s caliber must have realized the cost of challenging moguls like Rupert Murdoch, whose media empires across continents are conduits for conversion of democracies into corporatocracies.
-Rajiv Kumar

Note: The details on George Grenville are from book by Hugh Brogan ‘The Longman History of the United States of America’