Cut Protestors and Their Idiocy

As up to a quarter of a million people descend on London to protest against unavoidable spending cuts, I sit in Leeds shaking my head in mild despair.

These people truly are economic dullards. To bring London to a standstill on a Saturday afternoon is an immensely economically damaging plan. Businesses will face reduced custom - if not having to close - on their busiest day of the week. Which will lead to less revenue for businesses, which in turn will lead to less tax for the government. Which in turn will lead to what? More spending cuts. So in order to protest about spending cuts, the protestors could risk future spending cuts. Meaning they truly are absolute lackwits.

Fortunately, some muppet from Unite is on hand to clarify what they want to achieve:

"Our alternative is to concentrate on economic growth through tax fairness so, for example, if the government was brave enough, it would tackle the tax avoidance that robs the British taxpayer of a minimum of £25bn a year."

Where to start? Ok, let's concede that this is a marginally more sophisticated position that simply picketing businesses because they (completely legally) avoid taxes since it instead focusses on the government who, after all, allow them to avoid taxes. Of course, having the demonstration on a Saturday when most of that government have buggered off elsewhere to avoid the inconvenience seems to be a stupid position. But nevermind, eh?

I do like the conflation of bravery with agreeing with a personal opinion. There is nothing intrinsically brave about challenging banking tax avoidance, just as there is nothing intrinsically brave in people following my personal opinion that people should ignore Unite. Bravery is about a bit more than complying with the prejudices of another.

Now, it is true that I don't see a lot of bravery in David Cameron. In fact, it looks to me like he has all the backbone of wilted spinach. Which makes his refusal to truly jump on the bash-the-banker bandwagon (at least to the same extent of Labour and the anti-cut protestors, because he and his government still have their anti-banking moments) is a rare example of mild courage from our Prime Minister. It is arguably more brave, see, to stand against the current anti-banker mindset so prevalent in this country at the moment.

But even if we do agree that standing up to banking tax avoidance is brave, we should also acknowledge that bravery can also be stupidity. And we can then argue that penalising banks through the tax system may be a brave but also stupid thing to do in this day and age. Because we live in a global economy, and if banks feel they are being shat on they will upsticks and fuck off elsewhere. So the end result of tackling (perfectly legal) tax avoidance is pretty stupid. And counter-productive. And deeply naive.

Still, naive is probably the best word for those who are protesting these cuts. At least, it is the best possible non-profane word.