Thursday 21 October 2010

Government "Cuts" Smokescreen.

The ever-enlightening Burning Our Money has lots on the so-called cuts detailled in the government spending review Also EU Referendum has details on why the cuts aren't actually cuts at all.

I really do dispair at this country. The public is an ever weakening kitten, being bled dry by an army of bloodsucking fleas. It has to stop.

We can't go on handing over increasing amounts of tax for the government to fritter away on ever-unproductive projects. It has to stop.

Also, can someone tell me why the fuck international aid is ringfenced? If we can't balance the books internally why the fuck are we handing over wads of cash to foreign countries? The Department for International Development's budget is £9.1 billion. To me, thats 9.1 billion pounds, or as near as damn it we can save overnight. Just cut it. We can't afford it, its a luxury. Kids on shitty council estates in the UK are as badly off as some Bangladeshi ones. Why aren't we spending a few billion quid sorting their lives out and making them productive members of the UK public rather than condemning them to a life of welfare payments, drink and/or drugs? Sorry, I just can't get my head around that one, unless the government intends to keep UK kids on shitty council estates and condemn them to a life on welfare.and drugs. It has to stop.

MOD procurement has been proven to be fucked completely. Projects are years in gestation, benefitting only the large arms production companies as costs soar. During World War Two it took mere months for new projects to hit the front line. Okay, todays weapons systems are vastly more complex, but should still have clear requirements and project plans. The huge overspend, mid-project spec changes and delays to service readiness cannot be tolerated any more. It has to stop.

Our contribution to the EU continues to grow, with very little in return for our money. We aren't in the Euro Zone, so we don't benefit from a unified currency, we have free trade and open borders, but all that means is the dross of Europe ends up here to tap our so far unlimited welfare system. All of this cold hard taxpayers cash is handed to the EU commission without any representation. In America when we did it to our colonists, it sparked the war of independance. We have no input to the laws the EU commission hands down to us and all we seem to do is hand over larger bundles of cash. It has to stop.

Right now, George Osborne's so-called cuts have not addressed any of the major problems afflicting this country. Non of the hands-on micro management I said was necessary to accurately steer our country back to prosperity has been implemented. Instead we have some reductions in spending, but government spending as a whole is set to continue increasing. Who fits the bill? We do. It has to stop.

 Right now, all I can say is policicians of all creeds, colours and ideologies can go fuck themselves. I get the message loud and clear. It isn't going to stop.

Wednesday 20 October 2010

A Right Bloody Mess

Well, from what I can see, the coalition government's "spending review" is already in chaos. Just one example is the fact we'll have aircraft carriers but no aircraft to fly from them. My opinion on that score is already known, but it does underly the panic in whitehall and the hurried thinking thats going on.

The independant nature of our armed forces is effectively to end, with large holes in our future capability.

The next furore is the number of jobs that the government acknowledges may be lost as a result of spending cuts. The photo of Danny Alexander reading the draft copy of the spending review (whether deliberately or by accident) leaks the figure of 490,000 public sector jobs to be lost, with associated private sector jobs to go of a similar magnitude: some million jobs could be lost as a direct result of the spending cuts.

However, here's the dillemma: David Cameron doesn't have the luxury Margaret Thatcher had of North Sea Oil revenue and the sale of public owned assets to pay for this huge increase in unemployment. So just where is the money coming from to pay for this huge increase in unproductive labour?

Growth is set to be flat for the foreseeable future, so the only other way of funding the increased welfare bill is increased taxation. One might hope that all the recent immigrants from the East European EU countries bugger off back home to help reduce welfare costs.

All in all, so far all I've seen of the so-called "Spending Review" is a dogs breakfast of hurried policies and cuts, with very little aparrent thought going into where the axe falls.

Considering the Cameron/Osborne double act had many years to plan various scenarios for reducing the debt legacy left by Labour, I'm not at all impressed by the aparrent ad-hoc nature of government spending policy.