Facebook Transplant Part 12 - Originally Posted 27/4/09 - Reflections on the budget

Here is a post I made following the 2009 Budget

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Overall an interesting week, showing once more that our government is getting desperate, playing the vote catching game as much as possible yet still displaying a frightening arrogance, ignorance, and incompetence. Darling’s ridiculously and fantastical estimations of economic recovery have been mocked and debunked by just about every reputable economist that matters. We are getting put more into debt than since WW2, our government has borrowed more money than all other British governments in history put together. The mind really boggles.

The introduction of a 50% tax band for the top 1% richest people in the UK might sound like a good idea, and indeed has a 56% approval rate from the sheepal polled this last weekend. Of course, to anyone of any brains at all, the 50% tax bracket will not raise even the paltry amount of money that Darling and Brown think that it will – even the treasury predicts that 69% of the 350K people who are eligible to pay it will somehow avoid it.

Yet even if all of those eligible paid the tax, would it really make a difference? Well, not really in the big scheme of things. The rich would simply spend less, and the loss of VAT would make the money coming in a zero sum game, not to mention that this will also put yet more strain on the beleaguered retail sector. This goes alongside the fact that the amount raised would, at the very best, be a drop in the water compared to the gaping void in our public finances.

No, what we are really seeing here is a blatant class war tactic in a cynical attempt to shore up Labour’s rapidly plummeting approval rating (in the low 20%s now). It seems as if the Politburo in charge of Labour have decided to abandon the middle ground completely and return to their traditional Left wing class warrior status. Not since the ban on hunting a few years back have we seen this level of blatant class war.

I am more than happy to see taxes increased if we see a corresponding increase in the quality of services. I would even pay more than 50% of my income (not that I am paying that now – my income is paltry enough to escape most of the hits in this budget) if I could be assured of world-class and efficient health, child care, education, and security services. I would point to the relatively successful socialist experiments in Scandinavia to demonstrate how this would work.

Instead we have a government who has been deficit spending for a decade to prop up an aging and inefficient public sector, especially the bureaucratic behemoth that is the NHS. It is true that New Labour has invested unprecedented levels into health and education, but it is also undeniable that we have not seen an improvement in services commensurate with this investment. We have seen our schools dissolve into indiscipline and a disturbing “validation not education” mentality. We have seen our hospitals wracked by super bugs and hygiene problems, not to mention basic (and fatal) incompetence in many cases.

We have seen huge numbers of administrators and bureaucrats installed at all tiers of public service to monitor government targets, not to mention just silly numbers of social engineers in the guise of diversity monitors and health and safety experts.

As Jeremy Clarkson so rightly said in Saturday’s Sun, these bloated public sector entities should be culled. I would go further though – put the money saved not into tax cuts, but into nationalisation of what little industry is left in this country. Yes, I said nationalise the industry – I am not only right wing, there is a broad swathe of the left in me too. Certainly if we are to have any hope of a secure and prosperous future we need to rebuild industry in the UK – the world will be a very different place after this recession/depression and I do not see London ever completely recovering its position as the overwhelming centre of financial services in Europe, let alone the world.

I also think it is telling that the budget sets aside much more money for green issues and foreign aid than it does for retraining and skills building in the UK. As more and more top scientists go against the money making and panic causing consensus about the environment collapsing unless we act NOW, I find it appalling that any of our stretched public finances are being spent on pointless, yet headline catching, green initiatives of dubious worth (such as off shore wind farms – expensive and worthless).

I once again stress that I do support research into alternative energy sources, mainly to remove our dependence on the OPEC nations, which are pretty much to a nation vile and despicable and who support anti-Western agendas. I also support recycling to limit use of landfill, unless we work out a way to dump all our crap in Italy. Would anyone notice?

New Labour seems to have been killed off last week, and a lurch to their traditional class warrior chip-on-their shoulder attitudes has taken place. Yet more manifesto promises have been broken and we still have a year before a general election can occur to put only a slightly better set of Muppets in charge. I am really getting more disillusioned and worried about the future of the UK, and especially my future here. Is the grass really greener anywhere else though?