We could claim to have been mulling over the nuances of the chancellor’s spending review before attempting to come up with anything intelligent (quite a challenge in itself). Then again, it’s possible that we were waiting for A Change of Personnel to produce an insightful post for us to plagiarise.
In truth, we have no idea if a massive £81 billion cut in public spending is the right mix of fairness and fiscal policy that the country needs. What is most worrying is that everyone else, including the ConDem coalition government have the same looming gaps in their knowledge. The glib admission that there is no Plan B is hardly reassuring as Osborne lets go of the rope and we float down Shit Creek.
The treatment spelled out in the House yesterday, and which is intended to ensure healthier balances by the next election in the future, carries overtones of the purging that physicians of old prescribed for their ailing charges. The theory was to dispel the dangerous humours and was deemed a success if the patient survived the horrendous effects.
4 Comments:
I can well understand your bemusement. I have been reading comments from so-called business leaders in Wales and the general reaction is “we’re pleased that the uncertainty is over and now we can set about tackling the problem”. The trouble is that these are all private sectors bods who somehow think the public sector is going to outsource everything. The reality is very different and the first place that cutbacks in cleaning budgets is going to be experienced, for example, is in the terms and conditions of private contract workers. These business “leaders” are the same bozos whose irresponsible attitudes towards credit took us into recession in the first place.
thanks for thinking my rantings are insightful, you write a great blog yourself.
You make a good point about there being an anticlimax feel around today. I reckon its got something to do with the Government softening us up and managing expectation well over the past few months since the General Election.
What they announced yesterday is really bad, but not a bad as we all feared, even the Welsh Tories and Lib Dems are breathing slightly easier :)
it's a well established fact that if the british government made a serious effort to claw back the taxes not paid by millionaires and indeed billionaires through evasion - it would go along way to clear the uk national debt! But of course there's no way a government of millionaires is going to go after other millionaires!
instead the multi millionaire baronet and his filthy rich pals have gone after the very poorest in society in order to repay the debt created by.... filthy rich bankers!
while this british govt's apparent cavalier disregard for the economic needs of wales has been nothing short of astonishing! the axing of the severn barrage, the axing of st athans, the closure of the passport offices, the falure to proceed with the electrification of the swansea to london line....and now a settlement which gives wales less than either northern ireland or scotland...to say wales is being treated with contempt by the british govt would be an understatement!
one major consequence of all this is likley to be the development of a strong anti-westminster mood among people in wales...a national mood that could well be reflected in a big yes vote in the referendum on more powers for the welsh assembly next match!
Leigh Richards.
swansea
Its only fair if its made to be fair , and then its down to how cultural norms , demography and fiscal peculiaries fit into fairness
Whats fair to me isnt fair to some one who lives in a rual area on a farm maybe.
Cutting £10 a week of a disbled claimant may seem fair to a multi millionaire , but is it really ?
its abit lie - on the bright side .... There is always someone worse off than you -but I find it morally objectionable to take pleasure from someone else's misfortune
Post a Comment