Your share of the national debt

Earlier today I reported the TPA's estimate of the UK's national debt: £781,512,328,767.

This figure is difficult to comprehend, so I thought I should try to put it in perspective.

• Every man, woman, and child in the UK owes about £12,600 of national debt [1]
• Far from paying this back, the government is taking each of us £220 further in to the red every month [2]

This means that a family of four owes roughly £50,000 and every month they plunge a further £880 into debt. No prudent family would do this, and yet we allow it to happen at a national level.

Our true situation is much worse, because the national debt does not include our unfunded public sector pension liabilities, which the CBI estimates at £1 trillion. That puts each person's share at share of government obligations at £28,700 [3] — almost £115,000 for a family of four.

None of the mainstream parties propose reducing our debt. They only offer to reduce the deficit — the rate at which our debt is increasing.

We cannot allow this to continue.

[1] £781,512,328,767 / 62 million
[2] (£446,575,342 * 30.4375) / 62 million
[3] £1,781,512,328,767 / 62 million