Austerity needs to be balanced with growth. There is a lot of rhetoric across Europe at the moment about the 'good house-keeping' analogy. Well show me a healthy, balanced and well organised household that faced with hard times says 'oh we'll just tighten our belts'.
No, most household's faced with hard times will combine better budgeting and doing without, with more positive action to raise more income; mothers who don't work, seek work, those that do work up their shifts/hours, take on additional jobs, rent a room in their homes, grow something, make something or start something [business]. The challenge with the austerity only strategy is that we are constantly removing opportunities for ordinary households to raise that extra income, and the youth unemployment figures are setting up a generation of young people to believe there is NO HOPE, so why bother? this culture is hugely dangerous in terms of the cost to society because this is where the benefit dependency cycle starts.
I agree that we need austerity, I agree with cuts, and I agree that the culture of benefit dependency in this country is rife/unhealthy/unsustainable and unproductive.
But, perhaps we could look a little closer at our European cousins and learn from their example. Germany and France are also experiencing austerity measures but they are also experiencing growth. Their economies have been more balanced from the outset; manufacturing, green sector, technology, energy pharmaceuticals etc etc. They are allegedly less competitive for large blue chip companies to set up in due to their employment laws, but remarkably these sectors are sustained and in some cases growing in these countries. The employment laws in place have acted as a cushion to recession in these countries because companies and not the state have to bear some of the cost of hard times... we are all in this together, non?