Wednesday 30 December 2009

"It's the economy, stupid!"

Bill Clinton won his first election on this bon mot. Unfortunately for us, it hasn't always been the decider that it should be.

Here in 1997, the electorate decided that a bunch of tired old has-beens who had been delivering a fantastic, sound economy were not as appealing as fresh new faces who had excellent media control. And ignoring the fact that every single Labour government has ended in catastrophe, people were swayed by the promise of a Labour government that finally had its head screwed on when it came to economics. Mandleson famously said that Labour was intensely relaxed about people getting filthy rich. Ed Bollocks came up with the "neo-endogenous growth theory". It all sounded so promising.

But to my skeptical eyes, Labour did very, very little in their first term. They managed to spend vast swathes of money but none of it made any difference that I could see. Still, the economy boomed, mostly because the government did nothing. However, in their second term, people started asking questions of Labour, so they started to need to prove that all the money they were spunking out was doing something. And the culture of managerialism and targets came to the fore. Do you see how it all went wrong there?

Because while they were "just" spunking out huge amounts of our money, things were going fairly well. But when they started to actually do things, it all went tits-up.

And actually, can you point me at one department of government that could be considered "well-run" or effective or even cost-effective? The mantra is that we must "preserve front line services", but an "efficient" government only has one pound in two reaching the front line. The norm is one pound in three reaching the front line. So when you see that "eye-catching initiative" of 10 billion spent on schools (or whatever), the reality of it is that somewhere between 3 and 5 billion will actually reach schools. And that excludes the traditional arse-raping of taxpayers by government suppliers everywhere.

Government has recently decreed that the 270,000 poorest Labour voters would all receive a free laptop and internet access, with the laptop coming off an "approved list" and up to £500 for every voter bought. Now, to you or me, that would look like £135,000,000, in itself a nice chunk of cash, but nothing compared to the £135,000,000,000,000 or so of government debt that the Gorgon has signed us up to. However, this is misleading, for three reasons:
  • firstly, the laptops will not be worth what is being charged for them and the level of usurious profits made by the approved vendors would attract recriminations from the Guardianistas. So we would be spending £135,000,000 to buy, at best, £100,000,000's worth of laptops. If this doesn't sound too bad, I need to point out that the normal margins on commodity hardware are paper thin.
  • secondly, there will be the inevitable administration costs. If we are lucky, then spending this £135,000,000 will only cost us £270,000,000, but it's actually more likely to cost us the thick end of half a billion pounds. Still think that buying 270,000 votes for half a billion of your British pounds is such a good idea?
  • thirdly, do you really believe that everyone who has been given a free laptop will not flog it down the pub for some much-needed money? Or that they will use it for the intended purpose? So the money spent will not have achieved £135,000,000's worth of benefit to society, which is what the money is supposed to be spent on.

So, getting back to the economy and, to an extent, why voters are so "disengaged" with politics: we are offered a choice between a party that will continue the idea of tax and spend, a party that will fellate a shotgun of insane tax and spend, a bunch of flip-floppers who will tax and spend somewhere between the other two and the BNP's command economy.

Curiously, in all these models, the people who get to decide policy are all immune from the consequences of their decisions.

I suspect that the only sensible decision left to people who care about their future is to vote.

With their feet.

10 comments:

Anonymous said...

Another way of reaching out to the voters - http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/england/sussex/8432517.stm

Obnoxio The Clown said...

Christ. I think I'm going to have an embolism.

microdave said...

I hope you've got good smoke detectors in your house - unless you live in Chavsville, that is....

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-1239312/PC-Brigades-threat-service-Harmans-equality-drive-hit-middle-class-areas.html

Anonymous said...

I was going to wish you a happy new year Obo, but clearly thats a fucking pipe dream.

Anonymous said...

With their feet.

.......I did. I moved the company to the Isle of Man and live in the Caribbean. UK is terminally fucked for a generation in my opinion.

Mitch said...

Today on Uk red hot deals XP installed Netbook £99 to go.Why cant the chavs have these if they have to buy their votes.

Shithole Britain said...

Good analysis of the cost of the laptops. What will they get used for? Most likely so little Chantelle can stick her ugly boat up on Facebook and watch videos of JLS on Youtube. And that's about all. Note these laptops will doubtless come with a modified version of Windows with a pre-hijacked browser containing an impossible-to-remove BBC RSS feed so that in the unlikely event that the sprog in question would care to read the headlines, all they'll see is what the government want them to: entertainment and fashion news and fuck all else. In short, yet another pointless waste of fucking money.

Anonymous said...

You have obviously not been paying attention these 12 years past - as the Great Gordo will explain at the drop of a hat buying those laptops constitutes "an investment" .. ok, so they will be ridiculously overpriced, the recipients probably will trade them on e-bay or down the pub, but that doesn't matter - central government taking your money and pissing it away is "investment". I 'spect the re-educators have your name on a list now, and are looking forward to teaching you your lesson - never never criticise "investment" even if the "do nothing" alternative is both common sense and preferable ...

Obnoxio The Clown said...

The great "investment" scam? I'm not sure what you should call it when the government take someone's money with menaces and then spend it on things that only benefit the government.

Cunts.

Fidel Cuntstruck said...

You're over simpifying it Mr Clown - a stable and robust economy meant fuck all to the new generation of n'er do wells in '97, what put real fire in their bellies was the Bliar dream of equality for all - to them that meant money for nothing, so they were bound to vote NuLabia in.

You're just going to have to try your best to shake off these individualistic, capitalist values if you ever want to fit in with the NuLabia dream, don't you understand - even after all these years of pseudo-socialist nirvana - that you and I don't need an opinion any more