Minister Tells The Truth Shock!

Hillary Benn has clearly had some sort of truth drug in his early morning coffee. Because he has committed the dual cardinal Nu Labour sins of telling the truth and stating that the current levels of spending aren't sustainable:

Mr Benn told the BBC programme: "If I look at my department's budget, it is going to go down a bit and therefore we will have to prioritise."

Quite. I don't understand this made up bitching between parties about spending cuts. Everyone can see that the government has two options - reduce spending, or continue at the current levels of spending, bankrupt the country and then reduce suspending. The only person insane enough to pursue the second option is Gordon Brown; every other politician knows spending is going to have to be cut - it is just a question of what and when. 

The parties are ideologically identical to a large extent these days. Yet we're asked to tell them apart when at the ballot box. The issue of expenditure is one where the parties can put down the clear dividing lines in place. So this debate needs to change. Start from the assumption that spending needs to be reduced, and then tell us what you are going to cut and why. 

As a head's up, the party offering the largest spending cuts will probably be the one who gets my vote...

"Council bosses 'get more than PM'"...

...screams the BBC, egged on by the Taxpayer's Alliance. And yes, paying Peter Gould, chief executive of Northamptonshire County Council, £215,000 a year does seem a tad excessive and I think the good people of Northamptonshire - and indeed anywhere else where the chief exec or whatever those in charge of County Councils call themselves these days is earning a small fucking fortune - would be well within their rights to say "give us some of our money back, you money grabbing whorish fuckers."

But I have no issue with anyone earning more than Gordon Brown. In fact, I think everyone in the country should earn more than Gordon Brown. Even that crack addict at the end of the road who is urinating on a lamp post. In fact, I think that, given the damage Brown has done as Chancellor and PM to this country, he should work for free. However he clearly isn't fit to be Prime Minister, even for no salary whatsoever. So let's demote him. Let's make him a street sweeper in some depressing, drab town centre somewhere. And let's all go and eat the hottest curries, then defecate on the streets of whichever suburban crap hole we've sent Gordo to. Let's make him literally clear up our shit. For free.

Because this is his fault. It is all his fault. One of the main reasons why these council execs feel they can claim such extortionate salaries is because Brown has created a culture in this country where government (both local and central) has the right to spend as much of the tax payer's money as it likes. On whatever they want. Think back to Ed Balls and his "So What?" - they think they deserve your money. It is the mindset of government. And the buck stops squarely at the top on this one. With Gordon Brown.

Gordon Brown - good God, how I hate that rancid cock of a man.

Update

The Moai doesn't quite agree with my analysis. He says:

Paying people in high levels of responsibility is not per se a bad thing. Council bosses do a complex job, involving detailed finance, IT and HR issues, and the job should be highly paid to attract good candidates. The problem here is not the pay level itself; it is the fact that failure in the job is not swiftly punished with the sack, and that these sort of jobs generally goes to timeserving jobsworths.

Yes, it is the timeserving jobsworths that are the problem. If you had someone who was paid £215k to change a council into a lean, mean service providing machine and as a result cut back council tax, no-one would really give a fuck. The problem is that the people on £215k for running a council are, largely, morons who do nothing other than sit on their (probably) flabby butt cheeks and wait for the cash to roll in.

I maintain that Gordon Brown is a rancid cock of a man. And the public finally seem to be realising this.

Good Money After Bad

The Tories are going to outspend Labour on the NHS. That's right. The Tories. Outspending Labour. On the NHS.

No doubt there will be those who praise Cameron's vision, and mark this as a turning point in the electoral fortunes of the Tories. Just as Nu Labour appeared to show they were committed to economic stability* by matching Tory spending plans in 1997, so Cameron's Tories are showing themselves to be committed to the public services by throwing money at the NHS.

Just a shame that it is a bullshit policy then, isn't it?

This comment in the Telegraph article is eye-opening:

"Since 2002, Gordon Brown has pumped huge amounts of money into the National Health Service, increasing spending by more than £40 billion in all. Yet critics including many Tories say the increases in spending have not been matched by improvements in care."

Quite. The "many Tories" are right. Nu Labour has poured a fortune into the NHS, and have got no return on investment. The NHS was shafted when they came to power. A decade and billions of pounds later, and it is still shafted. If the Tories are elected, then they could spend a decade and even more billions of pounds, and the NHS would still be shafted. The problem is not the amount of money spent on the health service. It is more the nature of the health service itself.

The NHS is an embarrassing anachronism. It was created to deal with British society in the latter half of the 1940's - over sixty years ago. Even before the end of the Attlee years in Downing Street, the "free at the point of service"** NHS was already having to charge (causing splits in the Labour party even back then.) Now, decades after the health service came into being, we have a bloated, out dated monoply trying to come to terms with medical technologies and levels of population growth that seemed impossible in the 1940's. You can throw as much money as you like at the NHS: it will simply swallow it, and ask for more.

A truly radical policy would be to attack the NHS - to question why we need this (man made) institution at all. Why not at least consider a future where the health concerns of this nation are not tied up with the money pit that is the NHS?

But the Tories would never dream of risking that level of controversy, so we will see exactly the same policies towards the NHS as we did under Nu Labour. Which is to the detriment of both health in this country and the efficiency of the state. And ultimately, whatever the Tories say, the latter will lead to the taxpayer shelling out more.

The very defintion of madness is to do exactly the same thing over and over again and expect a different result. The health policies of both Nu Labour and Cameron's Tories are, therefore, the very definition of madness.

*Cue hollow laughter.
**Just remember, the NHS is not free. It is free at the (generally shitty) point of service. That wodge of cash that the government took from your last pay slip, that is paying for your right to die on a makeshift bed in a corridor in a NHS hospital.