Brown and Cameron – marooned on Fantasy Island
I have a column in today's Times, on demography, public services and Mr Roarke and Tattoo. You can read it here:
Both the Prime Minister and the Leader of the Opposition are conducting Fantasy Island politics. Both promise “world-class” public services. Mr Brown says his prescription is the only way, and the Conservatives will make cuts. Mr Cameron says . . . oh, who cares? It doesn’t matter. Both men are having a Fantasy Island argument for a Fantasy Island electorate through the Fantasy Island media. Neither of them are even acknowledging, let alone confronting, the biggest issue of all in the funding of public services: where’s the money going to come from? That question is not about tax cuts. It’s not about stealth taxes. It’s not about any of the ultimately irrelevant issues about which politicians scream.It is about demography. It is about that, as a country – as a continent, indeed – we are getting older. And that means tax funding won’t be enough.
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James T Kirk
July 3rd, 2007 3:37pmYes, Stephen, but which politician is going to blow the next general election trying to sell that to populations which are a majority of atheists and agnostics (ie. materialists)? When Muslims form the majority in a few generations time, Eurabian minorities will expect the US somehow to bail them out again.
dearieme
July 4th, 2007 9:47amThe United Estadas will be looking elsewhere.
guy herbert
July 4th, 2007 5:44pmIt is not just about where we stand in relation to arbitrary threshhold numbers (even if you discount wilful inability to do the sums, like Captain Kirk's). We may be getting older - we all are, and the age distribution is drifting upwards too - but that's not the problem. It is that we are (in general) doing productive work for a lower proportion of our lives, despite having the physical capacity to beat our ancestors because we are no longer decrepid or dead between 60 and 70. Few claimed Bismarck's pensions or Lloyd George's. Childhood is extending rapidly too. In the 60s most people were in full-time work from 15 . Our goverment's ambition is that a majority should be unemployably over-educated when they are released from student-bondage at 22. It ain't demography; it's that people have been seduced by a number of interlocked Ponzi schemata. (So maybe wilful inability to do the sums does feature.) HMG will be promoting selling water-filters next.