Cutting remarks
This is not what's going to happen
Cuts, cuts, cuts … everywhere you look, you can hear the squealing of the herd awaiting the cull of taxpayer largesse. Trades unions are fulminating and their leaders are vying for the spiritual mantle of Arthur Scargill. The police are threatening a breakdown in society. Labour politicians are squealing about how poor people will be dying in the street and how the evil heartless Tories are sacrificing people on the altar of corporate profits.
Or something. It all became a sort of blur after a couple of weeks.
The Tories, on the other hand, are claiming that these brutal cuts are necessary.
Both sides are claiming that this is going to be nothing less than a complete re-definition of the relationship between the state and the individual.
But there’s one small problem with all these perspectives on the situation: none of it is true.
Given the scale of opposition to the Chancellor’s surgery, even though he has not yet released the full details, a curious bystander might be forgiven for thinking that many billions are going to disappear from the bottom line of state expenditure. Like one of Todd’s victims, the final bill for taxpayers is about to be dismembered in a grisly fashion.
This is what happens when the state is shrunk, right? Er, not quite. In fact, not at all. In terms of cash flowing out of the Treasury’s coffers, there is no evidence of cutting back. Total government outlay is set to go up this year, next year and every year thereafter to 2014-15.
According to estimates from the Office for Budget Responsibility, the figures will be £696 billion in 2010-11 (up from £669 billion in 2009-10), then £699 billion, £711 billion, £722 billion and £737 billion. These sums are not inflation-adjusted, but even so, they belie the idea that a demon barber is about to “polish off” the Budget and stuff its remains into one of Mrs Lovett’s delicious meat pies.
Every single year, the tight-fisted Tories are going to be more profligate than the Scottish madman was.
So how are we going to be better off under this new government? How is this continuation of ludicrous profligacy going to improve the economy? How does this in any way re-define the relationship between the state and the individual?
And why is everyone lying to us about this? Politics has truly moved out of the realms of soap opera into the realms of pantomime. Or perhaps it’s just a farce.
I just wish the tickets to this show weren’t quite as expensive as they are.
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1
September 17, 2010 at 21:40 -
Oh dear, the Bob Crow nutter wing of the Union movement is going to be so disappointed when it turns out that they have nothing to strike over.
Sadly, it probably also means that the rest of us are going to remain taxed to the hilt for the forseeable future. I’d like to think that there’s a cunning plan somewhere in the offing, but I don’t have that much confidence in the political class.
Oh well, back to the grindstone. My moribund pension fund won’t rebuild itself, and by the look of it, the gummunt isn’t going to help me much anytime soon.
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2
September 17, 2010 at 23:21 -
The point is that while overall spending is rising every year, due to the supertanker sized boatloads of cash we have been borrowing, and will continue to borrow, the interest bill will rise considerably. So we will have to run hard not just to stand still, but prevent ourselves being thrown into reverse. The fact that the NHS will continue to get extra cash means cuts will be much larger in other areas.
For example I was talking today to a guy from Natural England (it administers environmental schemes for farmers). He said they are going to lose 1/6th of their staff nationally, about 400 people. Whether you think such people are required on the public payroll or not, cutting them, and loads of other similar jobs, will provide the Bob Crowes of this world plenty of ammunition to fire off at the Coalition.
Given the Coalition is going to get it in the neck for what little they do cut, they might have well gone for some root and branch reforms and made deeper cuts that might actually help get us out of the hole we are in, rather than a few salami slices here and there. If you’re going to be cast as evil baby eating b@st@rds, you might as well act like them.
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3
September 18, 2010 at 11:09 -
Taking Defra in particular & NE to a lesser degree as an example, you have to look behind the facade at how they have been allowed to operate.
Our bureaucrats have created systems of mind bogling complexity to operate the EU’s writ. A classic and oft quoted example was an EU directive on the beef cattle industry, which was some 20 odd pages long when issued. By the time defra had finished ‘gold plating ‘ it and it reached the UK’s farmers, it was 3 TIMES AS LONG. The Irish by contrast, who have a very successful beef export industry, reduced the EU directive to seven pages.
No private business could survive if it was run as the civil service is and it is not a question of just reducing civil service numbers, it is a question of massively reducing civil servants’ ability to harm the economy by enmeshing it in unnecessary red tape.
I understand the tax rules hand book has gone up from something like 5,000 pages to 15,000 since labour came to power and is regarded by taxation experts as beyond human understanding. These are the issues that need to be addressed with respect to the civil service.-
4
September 18, 2010 at 12:14 -
Yes – my father-in-law is a conveyancing solicitor. He’s had to buy another two shelves to accommodate the tomes and tomes of new legislation that ArchIdiot Brown brought into being.
Similarly, I had to take my name of the deeds to the house my ex and I owned when we separated. Apparently, it used to be one form -now it is five, one of which is a form to list the forms you are using.
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5
September 17, 2010 at 23:49 -
Just why has Foreign Aid (incl. to India & China both with Space Prograns, FFS ) been ringfenced????…………….and, somewhat to the bloody point, Emma Chizzit????
Words are no longer adequate to explain the utter madness that now afflicts this country.
The few leaders we now have left…the important ones are foreigners in Brussels….do not listen to us any more. The last time that seriously happened spawned the invention of the Guillotine. Our elite should not doubt that that could happen again…and the sooner the better! -
6
September 18, 2010 at 07:22 -
International aid to India defies all logic (I have nothing against India or Indians) when you consider their infamous space programme (£9B), and recent announcements; Aircraft carriers (£7B), new naval base (£4B), Nuclear submarines (£6B), new destroyers (£6B) and then factor in their destruction of the UK steel industry (Including the theft of £1B carbon tax credits for resale) and the cost to our economy of UK outsourcing.
All cost are from memory so please check before use.
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7
September 18, 2010 at 09:08 -
International aid, from our bankrupt country, to countries with booming industries (many exported wholesale, for peanuts, from the UK) is an obvious insanity and therefore entirely consistent with our rulers’ continuing treasonable behaviour. It seems that all politicians here feel that they are duty bound to support and represent the billions of the rest of the world at the expense of UK citizens. I cannot, however, disagree with the continuing supply of massive aid to Africa, despite virtually nothing of it reaching the needy.. How else can despots, their generals and other friends maintain their lifestyles?
Was the insane decision to ring-fence foreign aid part of the deal for the Lib Dems to agree to coalition? -
8
September 19, 2010 at 16:05 -
PT “Was the insane decision to ring-fence foreign aid part of the deal for the Lib Dems to agree to coalition?”
No Cameron and his chums were determined to do this before the elections. I can put up with paying tax, but the sheer scale of waste infuriates me particularly this International Development budget. Just what part of the electorate does the government think this appeals to? Guardian readers yes but not many others.
This is peanuts compared to the mammoth amounts sqaundered by the EU. The Bastards.
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