Labour is caught on a fork

and I'll go to bed at noon

I agree with a lot of this, being a mushy liberal type, but I'm starting to wonder if it wouldn't be better all round for the Spectator simply to pay you to bang your head repeatedly against the wall in lieu of a blog.

I mean to say... trying to convince the Coffee House that additional government spending might be a good idea? Are you quite mad? The only way you could have placed the feline more firmly among the columbiforms would be to mount a stirring defence of the European Union. Do you want to send these people to an early grave?

Keep up the good work, in other words :)

Steffan John

I think calling the most radical social-democratic reform of the banking sector since... well, possibly ever, nothing but a flop is incorrect.

Moreover, Cable's call for introducing large public infrastructure (the 'bringing forward' line is nice, but it's just a PR gloss to sugar a very sensible Keynesian pill for the austerity-Right), whilst calling for an efficient public sector is exactly the type of squaring the circle you're calling for.

And that's before we've even got onto the Mansion Tax, which is a Land Value Tax in all but name.

For 50 or so MPs to get these measures through (which go much further than Labour did with majorities of 170+), and doing so via the support of Tory MPs is quite some achievement.

I'm hardly uncritical of the Lib Dems, and the oxymoronic 'expansionary contraction' programme they signed up to has demonstrably failed. To dismiss them as a flop however is off the mark.

DavidDP

"As the IMF World Economic Outlook said yesterday, governments that try to cut budget deficits too fast will "kill growth"."

You might also say that the IMF also said that countries that have room due to low debt costs had the option of slowing the pace of deficit reduction. The UK was one of those countries.

Why? Because the government has so far taken a robust approach which has thus provided at least a minimal amount of headroom that would not have existed had the "Keynsianists" pushing more and more spending over the past year got their way.

Simon Stephenson.

The Keynesian argument rests on it being fundamentally properly allocated capital which will be destroyed by allowing the cyclical downturn to develop fully, and that it is better, therefore, to artificially stimulate the economy to prevent this from happening. Another part of Keynesianism, of course, is that in the upturn, over-exuberance will lead to misallocation of capital, and that therefore it's a good idea to de-stimulate in the upturn to prevent this misallocation from taking place. This reduces the chance that stimulus in the subsequent downturn will be wasted on the protection of capital that should never have been invested in the first place, and which should be allowed to fail.

There is a strong argument that the policies of the last 15-20 years have led to a great deal of misallocation of capital, and that this needs to be allowed to wither before there's much point in pouring in fresh stimulus.

I understand that Labour supporters don't accept this view of things, but I believe that their thinking is more wishful than realistic, and that their solutions are predicated on a situation that doesn't exist.

Ian Walker

"Killing growth is precisely what the coalition is doing to Britain."

Nice bit of petitio principii there, Nick.

If there was any money for Keynesian reflation capital projects don't you think George would be spending it? Of course he would.

But Gordon 'abolished' boom and bust, so he spent the capital reserves on vanity projects during the boom times - exactly what you're not supposed to do in the neo-Keynesian model.

To quote a rather famous post-it: "There's no money left"

The only game in town is to stick to a forecast of modest growth and put in place a defecit reduction plan. If the markets decide to punish us for our previous largesse, then I'm afraid that we'll just have to suck it up like attery medicine.

Rest assured that if you blink first in the great global game of chicken that we're all playing, you are going to be upside down, in a ditch, and probably in flames.

Baron

Keynes did work in the past when a large chunk of manufacturing was still based here, exports exceeded imports, immigration policies didn’t allow massive influx of foreign workers, given that none of it applies today, any stimulus to demand, wherever and in whatever shape or form, will benefit output, employment in countries such as China more than it would boost manufacturing, cut unemployment here.

To build the Olympics infrastructure most of the hardware had to be imported, most of the unskilled labour were foreigners, even skilled labour had to be brought in. Why should it be different if the Government funds the building of bridges and stuff, ha?

Baron has said it before, our only way out of the shite is a massive cut in public spending, nothing else will do it. If the boys won’t do it, events will, and it will be that much more painful.

Archibald

Did the Today chaps ask him about his role in the Dale Farm fiasco, as detailed in another blog on this site. Councillor Ball claims:
"after the planning permission was rejected it went all the way to John Prescott, the Deputy Prime Minister at the time. He gave the travellers a two year period to move off. In that time the site grew and grew and grew in size but there was nothing the council could do…That was 2005 and we went through the whole process again and it finished up even an application to the House of Lords".

He truly is one of the greats. He was probably too busy warning everyone about getting too cosy with Murdoch by his patented 'telepathic urging' technique, which involves him saying sweet f.a. to anyone, but really being very concerned inside.

Incidentally, I don't think any one of the civil servants or ministers involved had any sort of disciplining for the above farce, indeed many were promoted. The head man is now the top civil servant in Scotland. That's the real face of Labour accountability. You'd have thought if someone lost UK plc that much money plus whatever it cost to pay the chaps running it, they'd at the very least be arrested; can I half-seriously suggest that perhaps there needs to be a new law or two put in place to focus the attention of ministers when dealing with the public purse.

Erica Blair

So Nick proposes, 'reducing public sector pensions'.

How anyone can regard 'Nasty Nick' as part of the left is beyond me.

Richard

I agree with much of what Nick says here, but it is shameful for him to suggest that other people's pensions should be harmed as a tokenistic sacrifice - people on ordinary or low pay, in most cases. If Nick thinks such a sacrifice is necessary, in decency he should propose one that would make some difference to himself and to the politicians he is criticising. This is a real problem with his argument.

Richard of Moscow

Amen to the Baron's comments above.

Question: how much could our government do to stimulate growth? Certainly cut fuel taxes, abolish 'green' taxes and the TV licence, swap the EU for the EFTA, but these all seem to be politically unacceptable.
In addition, surely lower growth is inevitable when the price of oil - thanks to the Fed's 'stimulus' - is hovering around $100, which it is expected to do for the foreseeable future.

As Baron said, we'll have austerity sooner or later, whatever Labour members and voters think.

What specific alternative course does the writer, or anyone else, propose?

Baron

Richard, it ain’t just public pensions, the whole of the public spending largesse will have to be trimmed massively, we just cannot afford it, it isn’t ‘a tokenistic sacrifice’ either, it’s a must, it’s either cuts, or a collapse that would be worse than cuts, it has nothing to do with class war and stuff, those who retire today in the private domain are getting about half of what they would have got if they retired ten years ago, the annuity rates have been decimated, they have to take it, that’s the consequence of the idiocy of the ‘no boom, no bust’ years, the public sector cannot but share in the misery oof the dour Scot’s delusion either.

Erica, any intention to grow up one day?

Simon Stephenson.

Richard of Moscow : 6.20pm

Interesting comment you make about the oil price. Not for the first time, Liam Halligan devoted part of his Sunday Telegraph column to it.

The software won't let me post the link, but it was the 18/09 column, headed "UK inflation figures make a mockery of the economic assumptions of old". Forthright stuff, as always from Halligan.

Archibald

Erica, is Nick Cohen Jewish too? God, they get everywhere, don't they. I wonder what him and Martin Bright are plotting, probably something to do with Palestine I bet. Keep your eye on them for us, there's a dear.

Simon Stephenson.

"Labour needs to think hard about how it can win the right to a hearing, because the argument it should be making needs to be heard."

Right. To win the right to a hearing, Labour needs to admit that the idea of a much-loved Keynesian reflation programme is to all intents and purposes dead in the water, and that this is so because Gordon Brown's demonstrations of malignant, dishonest asininity, and Labour's outright refusal to denunciate them, have rendered the UK a no-go area for massive amounts of corporate investment. No corporation fulfilling its legal obligation to its shareholders is going to want to invest in a long-term UK based project when there's a chance of there being a government run by unrepentent, Brownite anti-capitalists in three and a half years time.

So there you are, Nick. It's a routine Labour dilemma. The markets don't trust Labour because Labour insists on controlling and overruling them, but without the trust and co-operation of the markets Labour can't deliver economic prosperity, and without the ability to deliver prosperity it has no justification as a political entity. The answer is quite obviously to do what is necessary to remove the markets' scepticism of Labour intentions, and then to stick to the promises made. But obvious answers, and inter-personal trust are the stuff of practical minds, not the dreamboats and visionaries who control Labour.

Richard

Baron,

Nick's argument, as I understand it, is that Labour ought to support cuts to public sector pensions as a ritualistic gesture of penance that will gain the party a hearing for its 'too far, too fast' argument. He doesn't advance any actual arguments, moral or economic, for the pension cuts; to him they are a token in a larger game, and he talks of Labour's need to accept 'cuts that will hurt its own supporters', as if those supporters were part of its physical body, to be offered up for penitential whipping. They aren't. They gained very little from the Labour years. Why should they pay the price now?

Call me old-fashioned, but I thought a penitential sacrifice meant sacrificing something of your own, not the meagre assets of other, innocent people who did not cause this crisis. Prescott isn't going to be hurt at all by cuts to public sector pensions. Nurses, teachers, hospital porters - they are going to pay the price, and they are as entitled to be regarded as 'wealth creators' as anyone else.

Nicholas

Labour should be caught on more than a fork.

The lesson is that you can spend more than a decade right royally stuffing a country, deliberately, negligently, incompetently and malevolently then, with no sense of shame, climb up on the moral dung heap to crow at the people attempting to sort it out. It's the political equivalent of starting a fire in a warehouse and then heckling the fire brigade with "You don't wanna do it like that! You wanna do it like this!". It's the stuff of Harry Enfield - but unfunny.

This is a little deeper than a bit of strategy and a cunning wheeze to regain votes, Nick. If there were any justice and/or Cameron had some bottle the New Labourites responsible would be on their way to the dock. And morally, by acknowledging their crimes and then suggesting ways to strengthen their arm you join the ranks of all the other media cowards in this country who aided and abetted - and still aid and abet - the bastards.

The Labour Party should have imploded following the last election and what we should be seeing now is a completely new, revitalised and sober front bench. Instead, thanks in no small part to people like you who let them off the hook, never mind the fork, we see the same old Brown Gang, the people responsible for the unholy mess we are in now shouting advice and criticism from the sidelines.

No credibility. And no-one of sane and sober mind should take lectures on the economy from Brown's Gang - or be seriously suggesting ways they might gain political advantage again.

Noa.

"For what it is worth, I believe Labour can wiggle off the fork by making a great show of accepting cuts..".

So you advocate tactical deception to ensure the same set of economically illiterate, amoral, indeed criminal politicians who were instrumental in creating the Debt and its malign lasting legacy in the first place should use deception to regain power.

Having done so would condone the use of precisely the same policies that have bankrupted us in the first place?

Well, such an argument is best served up with the dinner party pudding, which in this case is Death by Chocolate.

Baron

Richard: “Prescott isn't going to be hurt at all by cuts to public sector pensions. Nurses, teachers, hospital porters - they are going to pay the price….”

But, Richard, has it ever been any different?

Simon Stephenson.

Richard : 12.28am

I'm not sure whether you'll remember, but in the 1997 Budget, Labour/Brown removed the dividend tax credit from pension funds. This wasn't some piddling, one-off administrative change, it was a permanent removal of 20% of the funds' income, and the effect of it has had a massive effect on the work/savings/pension structure in the UK, as well as a severe downward jolt to the retirement expectations of millions of people working in the private sector.

Were you up in arms about this at the time? Or did you take the view that the UK government has an electoral mandate to arrange public spending and taxation how it sees fit; that changes will inevitably impact more on some people than on others; and that cries of "this is unfair" can quite rightly be dismissed by government as no more than appeals to emotion?

EC

"NEVER AGAIN!"

I would say that but for the fact that I never once voted for them. The great British(?) public that did vote NuLab in THREE times in a row are now reaping what they have sown. Unfortunately so are the rest of us.

Sod sharia, Brown and the rest of the gang should suffer the traditional fate of all traitors. They should all be publicly hung, drawn and quartered. Preferably on a nice cold morning so we can all witness the satisfying spectacle of the steam rising off their innards.

Simon Stephenson.

Nicholas : 8.44am

"The Labour Party should have imploded following the last election and what we should be seeing now is a completely new, revitalised and sober front bench. Instead, thanks in no small part to people like you who let them off the hook, never mind the fork, we see the same old Brown Gang, the people responsible for the unholy mess we are in now shouting advice and criticism from the sidelines."

Yes. Labour policy since Kinnock was elected leader has been to present its mission statement as:-

"Our aim is to increase the level of happiness and to spread it more widely, and in pursuit of this our policies will be driven by a few key thoughts, which are A, B and C."

where A, B and C are unobjectionable ideals, for a world where, with the right design, every action results in a Pareto improvement.

When in fact, Labour's internally recognised mission statement is:-

"Our aim is to increase the level of happiness and to spread it more widely, and in pursuit of this our policies will be driven by a few key thoughts, which are X, Y and Z."

Now is the time for Labour either to sh1t or to get off the pan. Let's have a bit of levelling with the general public. Either you intend to continue to be driven by X, Y and Z, in which case you should inform the public of what these key ideas are, and of the full implications of what following them entails. Or else you should abandon X, Y and Z, and treat them as just private beliefs, as yet unwanted by the people of the country to which you belong. Then come up with a new mission statement:-

"Our aim is to increase the level of happiness and to spread it more widely, and in pursuit of this our policies will be driven by a few key thoughts, which are L, M and N."

where L, M and N are genuine, realistic ideas, capable of forming the basis of credible and workable policy, and are what you pledge yourselves to being guided by, should the public decide to favour you at a general election.

Archibald

While I don't agree with the slant on this, the accountability aspect is very relevant. Prescott gets off Scot-free, and Housden not only gets off Scot-free, he also gets the top Scot job for civil servants. It's all just a wee bit shit, isn't it?

http://www.guardian.co.uk/public-leaders-network/2011/sep/20/fire-service-reoorganisation-accountability

Richard

Simon Stephenson,

Yes, I was against Brown's pension fund raid at the time (though I don't think it is the sole explanation for the contributions 'holidays' that some employers took, and the general private sector withdrawal of final salary schemes). I thought it was unfair and unwise, and a symptom of the way Labour's confidence had been undermined in the long Tory years. Labour should have used its strong position then to argue for increased Income Tax to fund the improvements to services necessary after the years of Tory neglect. That it didn't dare to do so was the problem. Like Macbeth's Scotland, Labour was 'almost afraid to know itself'. The argument for higher Income Tax was possibly winnable then. It would be much harder now, but there will be huge anger about damage to services. The disastrous PFI contracts are a product of the same failure. If you hate Labour, maybe you should be grateful to Blair and Brown for not governing according to traditional Labour principles when they had such a strong position.

But what was wrong then for the private sector is still wrong now for the public sector. Baron's argument, and perhaps yours, is a levelling-down argument of the kind you probably despise in other spheres (if you reject redistribution in favour of the poorest as a valid moral aim). Instead of being angry with nurses and teachers for trying, probably with little hope, to defend their mostly rather small pensions, be angry with Brown and co, yes, but be angry too with the employers who junked the final salary schemes.

Nicholas

Was it "redistribution in favour of the poorest"? Was it? Or was it the pursuit of ideology through services and legislation focussed towards specific agenda groups (by no means most of them "poor") plus a great deal of largesse for big state ideas, the chickens of which are now coming home to roost?

Was the removal of the 10p tax a "redistribution in favour of the poorest"? A pretty nasty move I'd say.

This sort of deceit and self-deceit is exactly what is wrong as a baseline from which to go forward. The New Labour years increased the gap between rich and poor, and removed much opportunity for social mobility to boot - clichéd but true. If they couldn't get it right through 13 years of relative wealth and stability why should anyone think they can get it right now - or perhaps more importantly be given the chance?

Richard of Moscow

Richard, (and Erica, and any Labour supporters) it is not a case of being 'angry' with the nurses, teachers for wanting to protect thier pensions - it is exasperation at their refusal to face reality.

Public sector pensions will soon be hit very hard for the simple reason that soon there won't be anywhere near enough money.

Private sector taxes won't pay for them, since we are probably facing at least a decade of low growth; China, India, Russia, Japan and the like are unlikely to lend much more to anyone in the west, since they are sick of the west failing to put its house in order, and in any case their mountains of cash will soon be needed to buy happiness for impatient voters at home; similarly, those UK banks which survive the coming eurozone crash will be in no mood to sink whatever they have left in propping up our feckless government - the shrewder ones should soon up sticks and move to more capitalist climes...

Be they in the Euro-zone, Great Britain, or the US, anyone who is opposed to huge public spending cuts needs to outline a realistic plan, one in which someone, somewhere in the real world will be willing and able to pay for this profligacy.

Maybe those teachers, firemen, nurses and others with real jobs should demand the sacking of all those with non-jobs. They could form a new, united, parasite-free public sector workers' union. Just a suggestion.

Richard

Nicholas,

You misunderstood my earlier post if you thought I was defending the New Labour record on these things. I quite agree: the 10p tax policy was nasty, and a Labour government in tune with the party's traditional values would not have attempted it. I'm glad you deplore the increasing gap between rich and poor, and would presumably support a government that wanted to get serious about reducing that gap.

Richard of Moscow,

If you are right about this gloomy outlook, as you may well be, then effective policies to reduce that gap will become even more essential. It will be intolerable for the obscenely rich bankers who caused the problem to suffer no disadvantage at all when everyone else is paying; it's pretty intolerable now, but in the scenario you sketch, no government will get away with claims that 'we're all in it together' without doing something to make the super-rich contribute. I would accept the need for some pension cuts or increased contributions if I felt that the overall strategy of which they were part was fair and just. While the bankers are still getting their bonuses, the modest reforms of banking are postponed until 2019, and the tax havens are still doing business as usual, why should I? If we're talking about what Labour should do, addressing this question in moral terms wouldn't be a bad start - and, yes, this would mean being brutally frank about what was wrong with the Blair-Brown approach.

arnoldo87

Richard @ 12.28

"Nurses, teachers, hospital porters .............are as entitled to be regarded as 'wealth creators' as anyone else."

Richard - while I agree that these are key workers, they cannot be regarded as wealth creators because, in the main, they use the wealth created by someone else, for the public good.

This is the nub of the economic conundrum for any future government, be it Labour or Tory. The inevitable continuation of globalisation should be forcing us to decide where our future wealth creating capacity will come from.

It certainly will not be in the old manufacturing sectors which use cheap unskilled labour. So where do our prospects for future exports lie? There are a few obvious candidates such as the arts, tv and film, pharmaceuticals and scientific research, but wherever these opportunities exist the workers will be highly skilled and highly-paid, and will be better at their jobs than similar workers in other countries.

What neither main party has yet articulated is a strategy to protect our wealth-creating capability, and neither has yet shown much of an understanding that such a strategy is desperately needed.

For instance, when Jaguar/LandRover was being unloaded by Ford a few years ago, Labour and the Tories demonstrated total indifference as to who would own them in the future. It could so easily have been sold to an asset-stripping private equity outfit and all of those skilled engineering jobs engaged in design and development of new vehicles would have been lost for ever.

As it turned out, by sheer luck, Tata won the auction and now JLR is booming. These are exactly the sort of highly-paid wealth creating jobs that should be nurtured by any future government.

We should be hearing about our future wealth-creating strategy on a regular basis from both parties, and the next election should be fought on which strategy is the better.

Best not to hold our breath though.

Nicholas

Laissez-faire immigration and property ownership policies by Conservative and Labour governments contributed to the devaluation of Britain, thereby increasing the value of the USP. People want what they can't have and the attraction of living and working in Britain should have been balanced by a little protectionism. Property and business purchases by foreign nationals could and should have required special revenue arrangements, deposits and vetting.

As with Hong Kong the British governments here are well on the way to unsustainable density issues, but they don't have the dynamism or imagination - or the controls, instead pissing away the privilege of living in Britain by opening the doors to all and sundry and making it too easy for wealthy foreign nationals to buy into it primarily for their own benefit.

Nicholas

"and would presumably support a government that wanted to get serious about reducing that gap."

Yes indeed but the cynic in me knows it won't happen. Most modern politicians are too stupid and too venal and as long as policy is being framed in soundbites by spoilt teenage wonks from privileged backgrounds who know FA there will always be huge rafts of unintended consequences and governments will vacillate between too much interference stifling enterprise or too much laissez-faire anarchy. We currently have the worst of both worlds.

Of course the straitjacket confining any escape plan is that the truths behind issues cannot even be debated properly because they are beset by the superficialities of "acceptable" language. As soon as anyone prominent speaks his mind the shrieking outrage of special interest groups through controversy stirring media commentators shuts down debate and terrifies the politicians. As long as governments, whatever their supposed political persuasion, conspire in this charade, solutions will be as meaningless as the way the problems are being articulated. As we have seen precisely in the great fiscal wastage of the years 1997-2010. All the parties need to buy into honesty, however unpalatable it might be, and the Labour Party should begin by recognising and acknowledging their mistakes, then undertaking to work positively with the coalition government through the emergency, for the sake of the country not their party political advantage.

Baron

Richard,

You aware how the compilers of GDP statistics treat public sector’s contribution to it? It’s entered at its cost, i.e. what the nation spends on for inst. nurses pay, pensions is taken to be the nurses’ worth in the GDP index, their contribution to it, the more we spend on public services, the higher the GDP, whilst there isn’t any other way to do it, you appreciate it that if we were to keep on borrowing, then spending the cash on public services we could easily show a healthy GDP growth whilst in reality we would be storing massive problems for the future.

Richard

Disconcertingly (for both of us, I imagine), I find myself somewhat in agreement with Nicholas. At least, I sympathise with his impulse here, and recognise his goodwill. Perhaps it's a sign of how serious things are. But there must be some provisos. If Labour, as the main opposition party, were to agree to co-operate with the government in the way you suggest - and I'm not sure what that would really mean in practice - then it would have to be on the basis that everyone recognised that the causes of this crisis go beyond any single party or political tradition. Some very long-term trends are implicated, and both major political traditions. So - no more exclusive and opportunistic blaming of Labour. Co-operation can't take the form of agreeing to be a scapegoat. Second, any strategy entitled to ask the opposition for co-operation has to be fair. That means that people on low and ordinary incomes should not be expected to make large sacrifices while the rich and super-rich make none at all. Bonuses and other kinds of obscene remuneration would have to stop. The gap between rich and poor would have to shrink. A way would have to be found of targeting taxation so that tax-breaks went only to genuine investment in the economy. I can't imagine it very easily, but I'm grateful to you for asking me to try.

roman lee

Keynes did work?
why do people think this, the New Deal in the thirties did not work but the Second World War most certainly did, the problem now is we have massive groups of ethnics who dont have the required loyalty to the country so it looks like we are screwed.

Richard

arnoldo87,

"So where do our prospects for future exports lie? There are a few obvious candidates such as the arts, tv and film, pharmaceuticals and scientific research.."

Yes, agreed, and is not everyone who works in one of these industries a product of the education system and the health service? Could they have learned the skills without teachers, and could they do the work, without constant domestic labour from others, mostly unpaid?

Wealth is created communally. The way it is distributed often fails to reflect this.

Richard of Moscow

Nicholas: "Most modern politicians are too stupid and too venal..." and this is where the media should do its job.

They should be constantly hounding the politicians about all the money thrown away on public sector non-jobs, QuaNGOs, fake charities, fake 'green' investment, EU membership, MPs expense fraud, frivolous and cowardly foreign wars... whether it is down to stupidity, cowardice, corruption or - in most cases - all three.

I sympathise with journalists who have spent years cultivating contacts amongst the low quality specimens in our three main parties, but their duty is to imform the reader.

The recent shale gas discovery near Blackpool is the latest example - Huhne, Lucas et al would rather see old people die because of higher fuel bills than allow us to generate wealth and jobs.

Richard, would you not agree that criminal charges, rather than future taxes, is a better way to punish the guilty? If a rogue trader is to be punished for creating a black hole of 1.5bn, why shouldn't Brown and his chums be prosecuted for creating one of over a trillion?

Richard

Richard of Moscow,

Well, no, I wouldn't agree that anyonone who doesn't share your political opinions should be sent to prison.

Nicholas

Richard, yes we can all agree that the fire in the barn was started by someone else but that does not mitigate for New Labour having sold all the firebuckets and trying to douse the flames with paraffin because the water has been cut off. Now, instead of recognising their part (however big or small we might individually attribute it) they stand on the sidelines and just carp as the coalition try to rebuild the barn, however imperfectly. A sense of natural justice comes into this and Labour seem arrogantly unaware of it. They pull instead the usual stunt of pretending they are all "new" and not responsible for what has gone before. Sometimes from their propaganda it feels as though the coalition were in power from 1997.

What their role in the present emergency could be is for once, just once, to put the country before party political advantage and express their concerns and suggestions in the form of private meetings with the coalition rather than waging a propaganda war by media proxy. They could openly announce that they were doing this but refuse to disclose the substance in the interests of positive co-operation to get through the mess.

They won't of course. And instead we get a great roar of derision from Labour activists (on QT for example) every time the coalition attempt to express the reality that "There is no money left, sorry (© Liam Byrne)."

Richard of Moscow rightly draws attention to the profligate waste of public money by the untested presumption that all these things are right and necessary, desired by the public and/or cannot be cut for political reasons. It is absolutely shambolic, a farce, and attains a dishonesty of staggering proportions.

As the robber goes about my house searching for more loot I'm not concerned with what he decides to take but just the fact that I'm being robbed blind.

Baron

Richard, have you ever pondered what did people do before the full Monty of the entitlement culture arrived? Were they all dying in droves, rioting or what?

Fergus Pickering

This thing about 'from priviliged backgrouns is balls, isn't it? Coming from a non-priviliged background doesn't mean you will be any good. Manny Shinwell was an ex-miner and one of the worst ministers in Attlee's governemnt. He cocked things up royally in 1947 re those very coal mines. Heath was from a (relatively) unprivileged background. On the other hand Churchill's dad was Lord Randolph and an ex-chancellor to boot.

Nicholas

Fergus stop nit-Pickering and adding dimensions to arguments that were not made or intended. The sentence did not read "privileged backgrounds = no good" did it? That attribution is balls isn't it?

Richard

Baron,

I don't understand your question. What do you mean by 'before the full Monty of entitlement culture'? Before people in the financial sector started paying themselves immense bonuses? Is that the entitlement culture you are talking about? Or do you mean the welfare state? Before the NHS and free state education, then?

And what is the connection with the discussion we've been having?

Fergus Pickering

'spoilt teenage wonks from privileged backgrounds' must mean young men from public schools and Oxbridge. Or does it mean something else? It's lego language, isn't it, designed to prevent thought. And drawing attention to it is not nit-picking. If you don't mean it, then don't say it.

Nicholas

Oh, Fergus, what a nit-Picker you really are. "Must mean?" What it doesn't mean is "coming from a non-privileged background doesn't mean you will be any good". I have known plenty from non-privileged backgrounds who were/are excellent and who never got their just due thanks to politics and the old boy's network.

Privileged means privileged. Wonks and spads - our present and future political elite, whether they are there because of Daddy's friends/relatives, or because of Daddy's money or Daddy's ideology doesn't really matter. That's what they are - "spoilt teenaged wonks from privileged backgrounds".

It's not designed to prevent anything. It certainly hasn't prevented you carping. And I don't know wtf "lego language" is anyway.

Richard of Moscow

"Richard
Well, no, I wouldn't agree that anyonone who doesn't share your political opinions should be sent to prison."

Political opinions are exactly what I yearn for in UK politics, but they are pretty thin on the ground in our three main parties. All we get is clumsy and slimy PR, childish soundbites, and outright denial of reality.

I love reading left-wingers like John Laughland and Neil Clark or right-wingers such as Mark Steyn and James Delingpole - they have brains and passion.

The politicians are mostly vacuous petty crooks, hence the uncomfortable fact that there is no money left.

Baron

Richard, apologies for the delay, haven’t spotted your challange before.

you should know perfectly well what the word ‘entitlements’ means, whom it refers not, nope, it ain’t the bakers, overpaid though they may be, they got their often insane rewards mostly because financial flows have grown massively in the last 20 years or so, the number of banks that have balance sheets big enough to facilitate the flows hasn’t, more to the point, one may dislike, be critical of, question what the bankers do, they nevertheless do a job, not something one can say about the five million or so who haven’t had a job in their lifetime whilst hordes of immigrants do the work instead, say thank you.

And the relevance to the discussion is in that we’re taxed too much, the money gets spent on consumption (large chunk of the welfare state, entitlements) rather than being deployed in productive, wealth creating domains of the economy. To put it even simpler, you have 100 quid you can spend it either on food, clothing or on buying a trimmer going around beatifying people’s garden, pocketing more than the initial 100 quid within the life span of the trimmer. We’ve been good at the former, hence the latter’s deprived of resources. Simple really.

Richard

Baron,

I suppose I knew you weren't referring to the quite grotesque sense of entitlement possessed by the Goodwins and Diamonds of this world. Oh well.

Your numbers sound exaggerated to me, but in any case I don't see why you have introduced the subject of long-term recipients of benefits to a discussion about public sector workers' pensions. Do you mean that teachers and workers in the health service should lose part of their pension because there are long-term claimants of job-seekers' allowance? You'll have to explain that step in the argument.

Baron

Richard, my blogging friend, first, a Guardian style apology for the mistakes @ 5.52, the most glaring one that of his ‘beatifying’ gardens rather than beautifying them, sorry.

To the point your raise, Baron has a lot of sympathy with every public employee who may have to work longer, lose a chunk of his/her pension, the thing is however, we’re all going to pay for the sins of the past, public sector workers cannot escape it, the excesses of the past will have to be righted even though the corrective adjustment will hit harshly mostly those who may not have gained much from the exuberance of the insanity of cheap credit, low cost of money.

Baron’s little pension pot money he’s managed to accumulate over forty years is likely to buy him an annuity some 60% lower than that he would have had had he retired at the turn of the century, whom is he to complain to? Other private sector retirees suffer the same fate, cannot do anything about it, have to bear it, inflation will erode the meagre income some more, the only way out is to get a job supplementing the reduced income, to adjust one’s expenditure, to emigrate to a cheaper country. There ain’t any other option on the table.