Wednesday, May 05, 2010

Half a Millenium Dome a Day

This is how much the British government is borrowing every day in order to prop up the useless public sector, that is, half a billion pounds a day.

This borrowing is set to continue indefinitely.

Although there is 'talk' of starting to reduce this borrowing rate in three years time, this 'talk' is based on projected UK economy growth figures which are based in La-La land, especially as the British government (whatever colour jumper it is wearing this week, to fool the proles that actually they have a say in government) is about to institute further tax rises which will further depress the fragile economy.

We need massive cuts in government spending, in the order of £200 billion pounds a year, and we need them now. We need to cut government consumption massively, and we need to put what resources we have left into production to produce our way out of this mess.

Consuming your way out of depression is a fantasy for lunatics. And Keynesians.

Anything less than drastic cuts in government spending, as outlined above, is a waste of time. The British government may as well just keep spending, until the markets correct it anyway.

Look at what we'll get for tomorrow's half a billion:

3 comments:

Andrew said...

I've heard that all three of the major parties are thinking about introducing a one biro policy in the public sector.

The details of this policy seems to be that all public sector workers must produce their ink depleted biro before they can be issued with a new one.

Labour are convinced this policy with help reduce the deficit without having to reduce Child Tax Credits or the free bus pass. The Conservatives are going to use it to offset the lost NI revenue and the Liberal Democrats believe that the deficit can be halved within three years by this measure alone - Vince Cable's word or your money back.

The problem with those that call for the 'slash and burn' of the public sector is they have no imagination.

Archie Dean said...

Jack,

"Consuming your way out of depression is a fantasy for lunatics. And Keynesians".

But you repeat yourself - to coin a phrase!!

AD

Jack Maturin said...

Got me there, Archie.

As to the biro question, when a good friend of mine 'worked' for the government (i.e. spent all day trawling the Internet for football stories), they used to treat the stationery cupboard as a personal gold mine of items for all friends and family. Hole punches, scissors, Post-it notes, Pritt sticks, reams of A4, you name it, entire streets had it gratis the taxpayer.

Trying to stop that wholesale daily theft is going to be fun. No doubt the government will create a new quango, and a whole raft of inspectors to enforce the new biro policy, with the head of the quango on a measly half a million a year to hit new efficiency targets on departments which all strive each year to spend more than this year's allocated budget to ensure that next year's allocated budget is larger.

Good luck with that.

Personally, I'd just sack five million of the smeggers and put them all on the dole.

They're useless now, even dangerous when they are regulators hunting for victims to harass, so they'll be much less dangerous and much cheaper, and equally useless, if we just slot them on the dole.

And after a while, once the saved money is used productively instead of consumptively, in the economy, they'll be fighting to be useful in the private sector after years of being lazy and useless in the public sector.

They will then feel fulfilled and useful again, after years of sitting behind a desk and moaning about everything, and spending long dreadful days pretending to do something, waiting for the clock to hit four o'clock, the end of the 'core time' flexitime period (they can always make up the extra time by faking their flexitime time sheets, seeing as clocking in and clocking out has been banned for being inhuman.)

Jesus, I'd hate to be a scrounging 'public servant' doing a non-job in some dreadful local council, regulating some useless EU directive on sewage treatment.

Still, at least the pensions are good.

Well, they will be while there's any people around willing to earn the money necessary to fund them, and willing to hand that money over for nothing in return except threatening letters from the government.