Wednesday 27 June 2018

High Tax Labour and High Tax Tories is a hell of a choice

This is the choice we are presented with in the Country at the moment. The current Conservative Government, devoid outside of Michael Gove, of any reforming zeal have transmogrified into New Labour - all the worst bits of it.


Unable to agree or solve the gordion knot of Brexit, their domestic agenda is a barren wasteland.


Into this policy-free zone jump our ever eager civil servants. All with bright ideas about how to make things better in each Government department. Every idea well thought out and researched by Love Island contestants. Of course, these policies cost money, they need more civil servants to enact and more importantly directors on higher pay scales to manage them. So the net impact is a large request for more money.


This is exactly how New Labour operated - well meaning lefties in the civil service dreaming up new ways to control our ways and shove 'improvements' onto the populace all at their expense. What jollies!


Only the strongest and best governments, who have their own agenda and Ministers with the peoples' interests at heart can avoid this trap. For Cameron, he had George Osborne and the recession to keep things tight, but that is now over.


Of course the real loons in the Labour party will be far worse. Rather than asking the Civil Service for ideas, they have their own crazed spending commitments - so crazy the Civil Service might think about trying to turn the volume down on some of them. Either way, the country will be bankrupt within 3 years of a Corbyn/McDonnell Government.


So what a choice, it is yet another reason to get rid of the dismal May as Prime Minister - for into the vacuum only bad things are projected.

18 comments:

Sebastian Weetabix said...

What the hell are the useless f***ing Tories waiting for? When are they going to dump the useless spineless appeaser?

They can kiss goodbye to the next election if they don't.

Raedwald said...

Could this be a cunning trap for Corbyn? The UK electorate won't stand overall taxation above about 36% - 38% of GDP and the last figure I saw was we're at about 37.5% (slow GDP growth). Public spending is something like 41% of GDP and the difference is of course borrowing.

By pushing tax to the top limit, and with anticipated zero GDP growth under a labour government, if Corbyn tries to fund his plans by taxation he won't last a full term. His only recourse will be borrowing - and the markets will make that option so prohibitively expensive that he also won't last a full term.

So could this be a cunning plan to take all the economic headroom out of the economy? If the Tories win the next election, a post-Brexit GDP surge will give the new leader some wiggle room, but if labour win, with no GDP surge and negative investment, they'll be trapped.

Every time in the past that labour have taken office, it's with a healthy Tory economy to give them a running start - but perhaps not this time?

Electro-Kevin said...

Raedwald - I fear that the Tories really ARE socialists.

Blairism is all that is on offer.

Oh for a British Trump. Even our celebrity businessmen are lefties (Branson/Sugar) Both have basically made good on the state in their enterprises.

John in Cheshire said...

E-K, Mr Cameron said he was the heir to Blair and for once he wasn't lying.

andrew said...

... in that case may is the grandchild.

Pity the relatives

Listening to r4 today someone said she is in place because anyone else would trigger the fall of the govt and noone else really wants the job because it is so horrid.

She is indeed the vaccum at the top of a jam jar that stops the contents going off for a while.

I like the conspiracy theories but it is more like the bulk of the uk population want a functioning nhs that includes social care and the tories are tacking to that wind.

As others have said there is decreasing distance between parties on spending.

I hope foe some clear water on where this money is raised, but will probably be disappointed.

estwdjhn said...

They could always try cutting spending on other things.

My local council has found nearly 8 million quid to put average speed cameras on a 10 mile stretch of not very busy rural road. The last fatal accident on it was nearly 10 years ago.
I'm curious about the value for money that this "investment" will represent...

Anonymous said...

Reading the linked article on this Zara person....


Zara, 21, works for the Department of Education under Damian Hinds, advising on policy

As a policy adviser Zara would brief ministers and guide the rules and principles of government.

She was previously an Operational Officer and Correspondence Drafter for the Department of Energy and Climate Change.


Zara studied psychology, English literature, religious studies and media at A level before working as a model for three years. She then started working at Whitehall in 2015.



Looking at the timings, she must have started working in Whitehall straight after her A levels (and must be doing modelling on the side).

I'm hoping her role has been bigged up otherwise this is a really grim view of civil service.

Anonymous said...

"Either way, the country will be bankrupt within 3 years of a Corbyn/McDonnell Government."

...and they will blame it on Brexit.

Anonymous said...

"...and they will blame it on Brexit."

No, they will blame it on sabotage by capitalists, and throw some businessmen into jail.

Don Cox

Anonymous said...

Raedwald - great theory - as with many of the other, ehh, alternative views; have you seen any evidence of any one in government with the competence (visible or otherwise) to run this play?

Personally I think they'd struggle to run a bath never mind anything else.

This said I genuinely enjoy these conspiracy theories, the more of which I read, the more I'm convinced that there is no central puppet master; and that Humans that are so fabulously capable of f***ing things up just by their random and unpredictable nature.

On the subject of conspiracies I came up with a cracker the other day: Nuclear Fusion has long since been discovered and is actually providing the majority of the West's electricity needs, In fact it's so good that it produces vast excesses of electricity. In order to keep the secret, and to dump the excess electricity the puppet masters started installing huge fans across the country side and offshore!! (the global warming being a byproduct and excuse to continue to fleece consumers!)

Happy hump-day to all!

Bill Quango MP said...

… Some of my colleagues are not being clear about the tax implications of their proposed higher spending… I want to take a zero-based, zero-tolerance approach to wasteful spend. We need to take a look at ourselves and think “what is the best way to use the money entrusted to us?” We have to make every pound pull its weight.”

Liz Truss. Tory.
Calling for some tax cuts and waste reduction.

She won't last long.

Electro-Kevin said...

"I like the conspiracy theories but it is more like the bulk of the uk population want a functioning nhs that includes social care and the tories are tacking to that wind."

The BBC are full on campaign mode for the NHS - the industrial wing of the Labour Party.

eastwdjhn - Speed cameras are money makers. There is one in Somerset that makes 2 million a year for the police authority. When my wife got done (5mph over) I emailed the stats to the Ch Const and stated that it must be a scene of utter carnage there throughout the year.

Anonymous said...

Andrew - " the bulk of the uk population want a functioning nhs "

A relative waited 6 hours to see a doctor in a 'community hospital' today. She was told she couldn't go off to get a snack because they didn't know when the next doc would be available. She's 92.

(Having finally got to see the doc, he wouldn't let her out!)

Ms Truss could start be sacking every public servant with either "sustainable", "inclusion" or "diversity" in the job title.

Does anyone know why we don't "just"

a) expand the intake of med students - I know the overseas guys subsidise the natives but how about some more Brit doctors?

b) ACTION THIS DAY - restore bursaries for nursing students and get training out of 'universities' and back into hospitals? No one goes into nursing for the money, and some of the best nurses I've known were graduates in other disciplines - student debt has knocked that on the head.

Great Protector said...

A gov't spending is dictated by statute. Even if the nonsense is thought up by civil servants, Parliament has to enact directly or through a SI.

Cut the number of MPs (and by inference MEPs) and you'll get cost savings as they'll have less time to meddle.

We all know who the real enemies of the people are.

hovis said...

It does make me chortle - the Tories are a bunch of inbred power hungry morons - with Labour being a slightly different flavour of vile.

Politically at his point in time you are offered authoritarian crony capitalist surveillancce state vs socialist authoritarian surveillance state - and that is really supposed to make people vote Tory?? wtf. I know they are dubbed the stupid party but if their supporters are s tribally dumb to vote against their own interests then so be it.

The Tories have no principles and are a shell party. Labour has a coherent-ish narrative even if it is putrid identitarianism (much of which the tories buy into). What is needed is a re-alignment but there is too much inertia in the existing party system. The focus having been made some time ago on us merely being homo-econmicus has seen, even superficially, ideas, ideals and ethics be of no import.

hovis said...

Geat Protector - echos of the dismissal of the Rump Parliament .. always loved that speech.

Great Protector said...

It is high time for me to put an end to your sitting in this place,
which you have dishonored by your contempt of all virtue, and defiled by your practice of every vice.

Ye are a factious crew, and enemies to all good government.

Ye are a pack of mercenary wretches, and would like Esau sell your country for a mess of pottage, and like Judas betray your God for a few pieces of money.

Is there a single virtue now remaining amongst you? Is there one vice you do not possess?

Ye have no more religion than my horse. Gold is your God. Which of you have not bartered your conscience for bribes? Is there a man amongst you that has the least care for the good of the Commonwealth?

Ye sordid prostitutes have you not defiled this sacred place, and turned the Lord's temple into a den of thieves, by your immoral principles and wicked practices?

Ye are grown intolerably odious to the whole nation. You were deputed here by the people to get grievances redressed, are yourselves become the greatest grievance.

Your country therefore calls upon me to cleanse this Augean stable, by putting a final period to your iniquitous proceedings in this House; and which by God's help, and the strength he has given me, I am now come to do.

I command ye therefore, upon the peril of your lives, to depart immediately out of this place.

Go, get you out! Make haste! Ye venal slaves be gone! So! Take away that shining bauble there, and lock up the doors.

In the name of God, go!


As a reminder that the Augean stables need cleansed more often than we think. After Brussels, Westminster and then your local council.

Anonymous said...

"without foreign nurses the NHS would collapse"

https://www.standard.co.uk/news/crime/voodoo-magic-nurse-guilty-of-trafficking-nigerian-women-to-work-as-prostitutes-a3874866.html


"A nurse has been found guilty of trafficking five Nigerian women to Germany to work as prostitutes after forcing them to undergo humiliating voodoo rituals.

London-based Josephine Iyamu made her victims swear oaths to hand over money during "juju" ceremonies which saw them ordered to eat chicken hearts, drink blood containing worms, and endure powder being rubbed into cuts. Jurors were told the 51-year-old then arranged for the women to be trafficked across the Mediterranean - with one being told to pay a "bill" of 37,000 euros.

Jurors also convicted the Liberia-born British citizen of perverting the course of justice by arranging for relatives of the complainants in Nigeria to be arrested.

Iyamu, who was made a British citizen in 2009 having been allowed to stay in the UK due to her nursing qualifications, is known to have declared a modest income of around £14,500 in 2016/17 from her work as an NHS agency nurse.

But inquiries after Iyamu's arrest in 2017 found she was able to afford to spend thousands on international air travel and to afford a large home in Benin City in Nigeria - complete with servants' quarters."