Or so says the character Dean Keaton in the Bryan Singer film ,'the Usual Suspects' played by Gabriel Byrne. Whenever I see someone from UK uncut on the TV, I feel like saying:
'There are - NO f***ing cuts'
As the excellent Christopher Booker points out:
in fact public expenditure has risen, continues to rise and this despite it having increased by more than 100% since 1997. Nevertheless, as Giroscoper suggests, David Cameron is facing an uphill struggle in convincing the electorate that his government is heading for anything other than being ignominiously turned out of office, despite the almost laughably inept Labour leader, Microblair II's attempts to alienate floating middle class voters by accompanying recent rioting protesters attacking BHS and Santander stores in Central London.
Perhaps the key to understanding why this is to reflect on the profound changes which have taken place in society and in electoral terms since 1997. For starters, since then nearly 1.2 million people have come into the country from across the globe, a policy deliberately encouraged by the previous administration for the express purpose of 'engineering a multicultural society' and 'rubbing the Right's nose in diversity', at least according to Speech Writer Andrew Neather. As a rule, immigrants are more likely to vote for Labour (although there are exceptions - the Ugandan Asians who fled Idi Amin in the 1970's tended to have seen real socialism in action, and didn't much like it)
Secondly, the constituencies were redrawn to give Labour a significant electoral advantage. Both Wales and Scotland, despite diminishing populations retained their representations, and as a rule smaller Northern constituencies were retained and the South East's got much bigger.
Thirdly, the public sector expanded by over a million people, providing Labour with a client state from which to draw support and which would also reward Loyal Labour supporters with salaries and pensions out of the reach of many working in the non-financial part of the private sector.
Postal voting was also made simpler, and with it resultant fraud has increased significantly. Two enormous scams were uncovered in the West Midlands. the judge commenting said that the practises were what might be 'expected in a banana republic'
All in all, it amounted to a significant uphill struggle for Cameron. The BBC (funded by a stipend from every TV watching household in the country) poured out incessant vitriol against the Conservatives and their supporters practically daily from May 2nd 1997. Even the Tories heavy defeats in 1997 and 2001 did little to stop the scorn. Of course hard left controlled state educators also clung to a narrowly left wing view of the world and woe betide anyone who challenged it. (I speak here from personal experience) In short, a number of commentators wondered if the Conservatives could ever win again. That Cameron managed to achieve the results he did last time round deserves some credit. Had David Davis won the race for the Leadership back in 2005 (and I backed him) it remains questionable if they would have been able to achieve even 307 seats.
Yet, as Giroscoper posits, the coalition seems to have hit the buffers, and is under fire both from the Left, and the right of the Tory party. What then, can he do?
1/ I'd abandon the attempts to reform the voting system to AV. Whilst as a UKIP supporter, the AV system would arguably benefit my party the most, what we need to look at is Franchise reform. Arguably not really tackled in over 65 years, what we need to look at is a way of ensuring that the left is never able to again build a coalition of government paid supporters to engineer a permanantly left wing regime again. Thus, we need to go back to potentially plural votes for those in the Private sector. They create the wealth, and thus should not be able to have an admittedly brilliantly created coalition of state supplicants deprive them of it. There would of course be exceptions for front line workers, but for the most part this would go a long way to stifling Labour's base.
2/ Cameron needs to take a harder line with the EU, and in this regard would have enormous support. It is telling that the next Treaty is unlikely to have even a single country put it to a referendum. Ireland having been told in no uncertain terms that for the next Treaty, the EC cannot risk having to rerun yet another referendum. UKIP seems certain to top the poll at the 2014 Euro elections, especially in the wake of UK funding for bailouts in Greece, and, as seems likely Portugal
3/ Cameron needs to address, as a matter of some urgency, the continuing anomalies of the 'West Lothian' question whereby, Scotland (and to a lesser degree Wales) continue to act as de facto independent states whilst continuing to provide nearly 40% of Labour manpower within the Commons. Recent revelations that Per Capita income in The north of Scoltand was below Slovenia and in West Wales, below Tianjin, arguably due to more than 60% of employment/income in both areas being dependent on the state makes this and Point 1/ even more pressing. In short, we have to consider whether the UK, and in particular the South West and South East of the country can continue to keep funding the less productive regions.
'There are - NO f***ing cuts'
As the excellent Christopher Booker points out:
in fact public expenditure has risen, continues to rise and this despite it having increased by more than 100% since 1997. Nevertheless, as Giroscoper suggests, David Cameron is facing an uphill struggle in convincing the electorate that his government is heading for anything other than being ignominiously turned out of office, despite the almost laughably inept Labour leader, Microblair II's attempts to alienate floating middle class voters by accompanying recent rioting protesters attacking BHS and Santander stores in Central London.
Perhaps the key to understanding why this is to reflect on the profound changes which have taken place in society and in electoral terms since 1997. For starters, since then nearly 1.2 million people have come into the country from across the globe, a policy deliberately encouraged by the previous administration for the express purpose of 'engineering a multicultural society' and 'rubbing the Right's nose in diversity', at least according to Speech Writer Andrew Neather. As a rule, immigrants are more likely to vote for Labour (although there are exceptions - the Ugandan Asians who fled Idi Amin in the 1970's tended to have seen real socialism in action, and didn't much like it)
Secondly, the constituencies were redrawn to give Labour a significant electoral advantage. Both Wales and Scotland, despite diminishing populations retained their representations, and as a rule smaller Northern constituencies were retained and the South East's got much bigger.
Thirdly, the public sector expanded by over a million people, providing Labour with a client state from which to draw support and which would also reward Loyal Labour supporters with salaries and pensions out of the reach of many working in the non-financial part of the private sector.
Postal voting was also made simpler, and with it resultant fraud has increased significantly. Two enormous scams were uncovered in the West Midlands. the judge commenting said that the practises were what might be 'expected in a banana republic'
All in all, it amounted to a significant uphill struggle for Cameron. The BBC (funded by a stipend from every TV watching household in the country) poured out incessant vitriol against the Conservatives and their supporters practically daily from May 2nd 1997. Even the Tories heavy defeats in 1997 and 2001 did little to stop the scorn. Of course hard left controlled state educators also clung to a narrowly left wing view of the world and woe betide anyone who challenged it. (I speak here from personal experience) In short, a number of commentators wondered if the Conservatives could ever win again. That Cameron managed to achieve the results he did last time round deserves some credit. Had David Davis won the race for the Leadership back in 2005 (and I backed him) it remains questionable if they would have been able to achieve even 307 seats.
Yet, as Giroscoper posits, the coalition seems to have hit the buffers, and is under fire both from the Left, and the right of the Tory party. What then, can he do?
1/ I'd abandon the attempts to reform the voting system to AV. Whilst as a UKIP supporter, the AV system would arguably benefit my party the most, what we need to look at is Franchise reform. Arguably not really tackled in over 65 years, what we need to look at is a way of ensuring that the left is never able to again build a coalition of government paid supporters to engineer a permanantly left wing regime again. Thus, we need to go back to potentially plural votes for those in the Private sector. They create the wealth, and thus should not be able to have an admittedly brilliantly created coalition of state supplicants deprive them of it. There would of course be exceptions for front line workers, but for the most part this would go a long way to stifling Labour's base.
2/ Cameron needs to take a harder line with the EU, and in this regard would have enormous support. It is telling that the next Treaty is unlikely to have even a single country put it to a referendum. Ireland having been told in no uncertain terms that for the next Treaty, the EC cannot risk having to rerun yet another referendum. UKIP seems certain to top the poll at the 2014 Euro elections, especially in the wake of UK funding for bailouts in Greece, and, as seems likely Portugal
3/ Cameron needs to address, as a matter of some urgency, the continuing anomalies of the 'West Lothian' question whereby, Scotland (and to a lesser degree Wales) continue to act as de facto independent states whilst continuing to provide nearly 40% of Labour manpower within the Commons. Recent revelations that Per Capita income in The north of Scoltand was below Slovenia and in West Wales, below Tianjin, arguably due to more than 60% of employment/income in both areas being dependent on the state makes this and Point 1/ even more pressing. In short, we have to consider whether the UK, and in particular the South West and South East of the country can continue to keep funding the less productive regions.
4/ Stop attempting to curry favour with the likes of Polly Toynbee, Gary Younge or other attendees of 'Compass' (sadly not the catering company - thos people I might cultivate!) conferences. These people despise the Conservative (nearly always renamed Tory in their writings) Party and everything it stands for. you aren't going to get them reconciled with your viewpoint, so your best bet is to ignore them, and if they go on the rampage, clamp down hard. It worked for Lady Thatcher in the 1980's.
P.S This post was originally written in April of this year, and as part of a 'house clearing exercise concomitant with sorting out my new abode on the other side of the Atlantic, I decided given the amount of original text already in the post it probably merited publication. A slightly more nuanced post on postulating why the apparent disjunction between, on the one hand 'savage cuts in public expenditure' and an ever increasing overall bill for public expenditure will await completion of my 'backlog' of posts
3 comments:
This is the funniest thing I've read all week, and it's been a funny week. No cuts... ha ha. So the end of EMA, massive scale-back of Sure Start, huge cuts to benefits and tax credits, library closures, bed-blocking because social care budgets have been slashed, etc. etc. etc. was all just a mirage then. Of course, as Booker and his ilk are sitting on yachts with martinis, they don't use any public services. Try walking down any UK high street and you'll see cuts aplenty. But sure, if the Tories want to spin the line that there are no cuts, let them go ahead. By the way: with that "100% since 1997" figure, you might want to look up "price inflation" on Wikipedia. We're spending hundreds of times more than we did in 1945... in nominal terms.
Seriously I had to wipe my eyes after reading this post I was laughing so much.
BTW I've changed my name on the blog from Giroscoper to Hal Berstram because given that there are two of us on here now, it would get rather confusing.
If you read the last paragraph, you'll see this was written a couple of months ago - a subsequent post will examine the disconnect between cuts in certain programmes on the one hand and a seemingly inexorable rise in Public expenditure on the other.
Are you seriously contending that the sole reason for the increase in Public expenditure between 1997 and 2010 is price inflation - I thought inflation, by either RPI or CPI measure was at historic lows during the period in question? No doubt in nominal terms we are spending significantly more than we did , in say, 1979 let alone 1945. It's interesting you use that as a reference point - at that time, we still controlled more than a third of the globe (at least nominally)yet despite losing almost every colony we hadsince that time, and even with the impact of a six year war, government expenditure was lower, inflation adjusted, than it was in April 2010 - where has the money gone?
In terms of Booker sipping Martinis - odds are he's working on the 'In the back' section of Private Eye, or doing his usual sterling work exposing the myths around 'Climate change' or the true nature of the EU. In terms of the 'High street' being impacted by cuts - did the government own loads of retail outlets of which I'm unaware?
Glad you enjoyed the post anyhow!
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