It is obvious the coalition government is still so divorced from economic reality that it views the deficit cutting operation largely as a public relations exercise. The markets take a more urgent view, as do the credit ratings agencies. The warning shot fired across the coalition’s bows by Fitch, implying a threat to Britain’s AAA rating unless the emergency budget on June 22 comes up with some concrete measures for deficit reduction, should concentrate minds. Credit ratings agencies may be about as discredited as the banking system, but they are a fact of life and they influence markets.
The government, however, is still paddling around in the shallows, planning to ask the public where it would like the cuts to be directed. “Next door,” is the obvious response, “anywhere but here.” What is the point of asking members of the public, charities and other interested parties where cuts should be made?
This ridiculous exercise incidentally confirms the increasing status of charities as a virtual arm of government, when many of them are thinly disguised left-wing pressure groups whose “charitable” activity is questionable. What charity is going to reply to government consultation: “Two-thirds of our money is spent on salaries and administration and only a fraction of our resources on the supposed beneficiaries, so please feel free to cut our subsidy”?
And would the members of the public being consulted on deficit reduction be the same public that was denied a referendum on the Lisbon Treaty? This bogus consultation of a despised and marginalised public that has for decades been deprived of any say on the fundamental issue of national sovereignty is a transparent public relations scam. The Government never hesitated or looked over its shoulder when it was subjecting us to the hegemony of Brussels. Now it should decide on the cuts and get on with it, before Britain comes a cropper on the international markets and the damage is irreparable. That is what governments are for.
If Dave is looking for a massive cut in spending that would cause no pain whatsoever, except to prospective carbon traders, he should abandon the whole climate change nonsense. Since the Climate Change Bill in 2008, Britain has been signed up to a mind-boggling expenditure totalling £205bn over the next decade, or £10,000 for each family in the country. This to “fight” a non-existent threat, the great carbon phobia of man-made global warming.
Future historians will look back on this insanity and marvel at how a primitive and discredited superstition could so imprison the minds of politicians that they bankrupted their country in subservience to it. The money might as well be burned, for all the practical good it will do. Yet even in this emergency the financial cuts being imposed on the ludicrously titled Department of Energy and Climate Change amount to a puny £85m, virtually none of it shaved off the climate change agenda.
Anybody who does not get extremely bad vibes from the ineffectual coalition’s approach to the financial crisis is living in a fool’s paradise. Britain is on exceedingly thin ice and the clever money is on whatever comes out of the emergency budget being inadequate and misdirected, to cause maximum pain for minimum gain. Now is the time when all the PR, soundbites, spin and “fairness” rhetoric needs to give place to sombre reality. But don’t hold your breath.
No comments:
Post a Comment