‘The settlement of the national debt is on the principles before lucidated merely an arrangement of form, and however necessary and important is an affair of mere arithmetical proportions readily determined; nor can I see how those who, being deprived of their unjust advantages, will probably inwardly murmur, can oppose one word of open expostulation to a measure of such irrefragable justice.’

Shelley, A Philosophical View of Reform, 1820

 Introduction

In many European societies the process of repaying  vast public sector debt is disfiguring society and distorting and suffocating the economy. The process by which these debts were acquired is obscure to most citizens, and has been the subject of tendentious political argument. This has led to an incendiary situation where the most important political decisions of a generation, which are utterly changing the nature of the society we have negotiated between ourselves, are made within narrow, technical parameters with the citizenry being excluded from the discussion and deprived of the information they need to participate in a process of democratic consideration. More