Category Archives: public money

What is it not?

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More than 2,000 charities across England have had their funding cut or withdrawn altogether by local councils, according to research.

Then they’re not charities, are they? Not for profit organisations, certainly. Quangos, probably. But charities, no.

A quarter of all charities receive funding from the state and for some groups – such as employment and training organisations – it can make up the bulk of their income.

*thud*               *thud*               *thud*               *thud*                  *thud*

That’s the sound of me hitting my head off the desk. Look, a charity is an organisation that an individual donates money or time to voluntarily. An organisation which takes money purloined from me under the threat of prison, without my having any say so is not a charity. It just isn’t. We already have employment and training organisations, they are called schools and colleges. Throwing money at organisations to right their wrongs is not the answer. Address the problems in the education system. This is a system that is little more than a stat generating organisation so politicians can throw brickbats at each other. Come on, why not really think about the children, instead of the next election or management ‘teaching’ post? As for organisations who get the bulk of their income from public funds, well, where’s the accountability? Where’s the democracy? If I’m not happy with the way the Home Office or FCO is being run, I at least get the chance to vote for someone else to have a go, with these ‘charities’, where is my say? It’s my bloody money.

Research for the False Economy website [. . .] found it was charities related to children and young people that were most affected, with more than 200 receiving cuts in funding.

Look, the party is over. I’m sure you’ve been doing very important work and I’m sure it’s made you feel very important. But the fact is that our national debt is running at £900 billion, we simply do not have the money. You may as well shriek that the sun isn’t green and that our rivers don’t run with ginger beer.

Voluntary Action South Leicestershire (VASL) has lost £20,939 state funding for its befriending service, which supports those those who are isolated and lonely.

And that is a scandal, not that the funding has been cut, but that people are isolated and lonely and relying on ‘support’, whatever form that takes, from perfect strangers. I find myself wondering how much support a group can provide. How often are these people visited or taken out? Once, twice a week?

The problem is not a lack of public funds. The problem is a system which squeezes so much out of people financially that they have to work and work and work to keep their heads above water. A system which has spent the last twenty years telling people there is no problem that cannot be solved by state funding and intervention, when the truth is that there isn’t a problem which cannot be made worse by state funding and intervention.

Successive governments have launched shocking and devastating attacks on the old bastions of family, friends, neighbours and community, and reduced them to rubble. They’ve told us for over a generation that only the state can provide your needs, desperate to make us reliant on them, and they simply cannot deliver the goods. Dave’s Big Society is a con, he wants people to provide the services for free, but I get the impression he’s wanting to make sure it is all carefully overseen and controlled. Governments don’t like people doing things for themselves.

These people aren’t isolated and lonely because of some nebulous ‘social decay’, they’re isolated and lonely because of a social vandalism that is nothing short of criminal.

Well, now they’ve run out of our money. Again. Giving people our cash to do stuff that has always been done by friends and family was never going to work, will never work and can never work.

The problem is, the system is so comprehensively destroyed, I don’t know if it can ever be repaired; looking after the people is now the job of the state and the state is incapable of love, tenderness or humanity – it will always be reduced to numbers on a sheet of paper.

How? How can you quantify compassion? It certainly can’t be expressed in pounds and pence and checklists.

Or, alternatively.

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Sometimes I just get hit by inspiration. Moments of absolute clarity are very few and far between, yet this evening I have experienced such a revelation. Let’s see if you can have the same experience.

As you may well be aware, I’m lucky enough to call Canterbury home, it is a very nice city indeed. Rough Guide, or someone recently stated that it was the finest cathedral city in England, I’d find it hard to disagree. But it isn’t without its problems, oh no, and we’ve got a very serious one. You see it would appear that the Mayoral robes are in a bit of a state.

But what’s this? Those wonderful people at Canterbury City Council have hit upon a common sense solution to the problem.

Canterbury City Council is recommending that the Lord Mayor’s robes be replaced at a cost of £17,000.

Oh, is that all? Just the seventeen thousand? Well why stop there? We could have a set for every day of the week.

Other options being considered are to clean and repair the current robe, or replace the the current robe body.

I’m trying desperately to think of another option.

Hmmmm.

Carry on reading, it’ll come to me in a moment.

Cleaning and repairing the robe would cost £3,575, and £11,795 would pay for a a new robe body which is expected to last for 10 years. 

Hang on, there’s an idea forming. . .

Taken over the 20-year lifespan of the new robes, full replacement would be the cheapest option, the council said.

Ah-ha! That’s it! There’s the other option, and it is much, much cheaper.

Brace yourself. . .

(You know where this is going, don’t you, you clever little blogreader, you?)

How about, not replacing them at all?

Do we really need to pay good money for an unelected mayor (OK, he’s an elected councillor, but heaven forbid we should be able to directly elect him or her) to have some robes so they can ponce around like a cross between Dick Turpin and Liberace? (Apologies for the low-res picture which I’ve lifted from the Al-Jabeeba report.)

Really, in the 21st Century do we need people walking around in such a ridiculous get up at such cost to the public purse? Really?

Yes, I know everyone else has got one, but everyone else used to have an outside toilet and rickets, doesn’t mean we had to do the same.

In these straightened times I’m wondering how much change you’d get out of seventeen grand once you’ve paid the wages of one of the guys who so lovingly tends the city’s beautiful Westgate Gardens (pictured at the top), a public possession which benefits everyone? I’m betting there isn’t a great deal of price difference between the two, and I’m betting I know which facility more people enjoy.

Really? Seventeen grand to play dress up? Give me strength.

OK, I’ll admit it, I was wrong.

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I’m guilty of a terrible misinterpretation of the realities of life. All this time I’ve been banging on about how we should leave the EU, and I didn’t realise that by following this course of action I’m trying to kill lots of little birdies.

No really.

A wildlife has warned that EU budget cuts could force some animal species into extinction.

The Royal Society for the Protection of Birds (RSPB) is worried the scrapping of EU payments to farmers using techniques to protect and encourage vulnerable species will have catastrophic effects.

I think that what the report means to say is ‘A wildlife charity‘, but I’ll let them off.

If the funds are removed from the EU budget proposals, which are being announced on Wednesday, June 29, the charity fears declining species in Kent such as the grey partridge, the lapwing and the tree sparrow will suffer.

Martin Harper, the RSPB’s conservation director, said: “Our countryside has faced many threats, but this would be really savage.

Oh come on, are we supposed to believe that if EU funding cuts come to pass that the farmers, people who really do understand their place in the grand scheme of things, people who have an innate appreciation of nature and how it all fits together, is going to say ‘fuck ‘em’ and bulldoze all the habitat?

And are we really supposed to believe that funding from the EUSSR is the only way this catastrophe can be avoided?

Really?

Hang on, what EU budgetary cut?

The Government has criticised an inflation-busting EU budget rise in the face of UK demands for a freeze in line with national austerity measures.
The European Commission is proposing a 4.9% increase in EU spending next year – boosting the euro-budget by £5.5 billion to £117 billion. 
No, there’s something fishy going on here.
I wonder where the RSPB. . . 

In 2010 RSPB reported received a staggering £22.6 million in public money, including:

  • Department for Environment, Food & Rural Affairs: £4.5 million
  • Landfill Communities Fund: £2.3 million
  • European Union: £2.1 million

Ah, I see.

Sorry guys, this party’s over.

Extremism to be hit by spending cuts.

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Or something.

The government is to publish an updated strategy for tackling extremism and terrorism, on Tuesday afternoon.

Good-oh, does it involve us keep our noses out of other people’s business? I’m guessing not because God knows their nose spends enough time in my business.

So how do we tackle extremism?

recommendations expected include monitoring people convicted of terrorism offences on their release

Oh, do you think? We’ve got all this wonderful legislation to stop all of us in the streets and spy on us, just in case we wake up one morning and discover we’ve developed an interest in peroxide, rusty nails and trains, and yet, you haven’t even had the nouse to keep an eye on the people who demonstrably do have such an interest? Isn’t this all a bit arse about face? Is it not common sense to keep tabs on those who are active rather than wasting time suspecting all of us?

a renewed focus on the use of the internet, as the government considers a “national blocking list” of violent and unlawful websites.

Hmmm, that rings a warning bell, there’s huge scope for mission drift there, it all sounds so reasonable, doesn’t it? I’m betting all the sites declared unlawful will be nodded through with the minimum of oversight. EDF? BNP? Any others?

A final draft of the new document, to be published in Parliament on Tuesday, was reportedly seen by the Times.

It says it was “possible” Prevent funding had gone to extremist groups promoting hardline beliefs.

Hang on a moment, you mean to say that some of the money earmarked to combat extremism has been handed to the extremists? Oh, oh, that’s brilliant. I look forward to submitting that as evidence the next time some grey little drone solemnly informs me that only the State can do X, Y or Z.

On Monday, Mrs May accused universities of complacency in tackling Islamist extremism – a charge denied by the vice chancellors’ body, Universities UK.

She told the Daily Telegraph: “I don’t think they have been sufficiently willing to recognise what can be happening on their campuses and the radicalisation that can take place. I think there is more that universities can do.”

Absolutely the universities should be held to account, it is all their fault. Do you remember when the paramilitary arm of the University of Central Lancashire went into Algeria, blowing things up left, right and centre?

I’m not one to bang the anti-cuts drum, but you scale back university funding and make the students pay thousands of pounds to attend. Fair enough, but that changes the landscape, that puts the universities into direct market place competition. Are you going to spend the better part of £10k to a university only for the university to start monitoring who you are talking to, where and what about? That’s business suicide.

But the new document is expected to say the government will ensure that no more cash will be given “to organisations that hold extremist views or support terrorist-related activity of any kind”.

But this is revolutionary! One of the best ways to hamstring extremist groups is to starve them of funds, I’m so glad that it is as easy as stopping giving them the money from my taxes.

Previously, Mrs May has said that, as a result of the strategy’s review of government support, about 20 of the organisations that received funding over the past three years would have their cash withdrawn.

According to the Times, one reason for the failings of the current policy was a lack of scrutiny of the programme to test whether money was going to legitimate groups and bringing benefits.

Because this is what happens when you hand out cash to ridiculous special interest groups, be they the Muslim Council of Britain (I’ve never seen an election for them, they’re not self appointed, by any chance, are they?), the NSPCC or the Dunfermline Dramatic Society for Amputee Transgender Somalis. Realistically, the benefits for society are far outweighed by the cold, hard cash poured into them, and the voice of the rest of society is drowned out by the high pitched whine given by the addicts when the flow of the fiscal narcotic is stemmed.

Speaking of special interest groups:

But Azad Ali, chairman of the Muslim Safety Forum. . .

Who? The Muslim Safety Forum? What? Is this to do with making sure that hard hats are halal?

. . . and an advisor to the previous government on extremism, said the government should not attack ideologies.

You’re kidding yourself mate, that’s all governments do. Attacking ideologies is what governments do best, and I’m wondering how long it is until anyone who holds an opinion on any subject that is contrary to that of government is labelled as an extremist.

You’ve been used, buddy. Stings, doesn’t it?

You can spend as much money as you like combating terrorism and extremists, but until such time as we really want to tackle the cause nothing will change. The cause is not swivel eyed preachers and websites with shouty music and footage of half arsed training camps. The cause is what makes these people susceptible to the rantings of these nutters in the first place, I’m afraid we have to look at our actions abroad, both militarily – did we really need to go into Iraq? Was there no history before 9/11? Who funded the nutters that took over Afghanistan? We did, because of our fears over the USSR. Who occupied Iran and propped up the hated and authoritarian Mohammad Reza Pahlavi? – and diplomatically – look at our support or silence over a number of regimes across the world, keeping people under the thumb, voiceless and destitute.

Is it any wonder there’s a parade of angry, desperate and hopeless people? You’ll always get religious nutters, the West has their fair share, but it might be an idea to stop pushing people towards them. 

Or you could have just re-done the test.

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I despair at sections of the public civil service who just seem obsessed with spanking public money in needlessly bureaucratic exercises that benefit nobody at all. I try to mount a considered defence of civil servants, because I am one, I am keen to let people know that we’re not all incompetent wasters, but when faced with stories like this, it makes the task pretty much untenable:

A bull sentenced to slaughter after testing positive for bovine TB has won a reprieve after its South Yorkshire owners took its case to the High Court.

Ken Jackson, of Forlorn Hope Farm, Walden Stubbs, disputes the validity of a TB test that condemned Boxy the bull.

Defra ordered the bull to be slaughtered after a positive blood sample was taken last April.

Now, given the volume of TB tests done on cattle in the UK, it must be fairly safe to assume that a cost-effective test has been developed and also that from time to time these tests go wrong. The simple solution is to re-test.

Mr Jackson had told the court he wanted prize-winning Hallmark Boxter, also known as Boxy, to be re-tested and offered to pay for it.

He argued that the officers who took the sample mixed two half-full vials in the field, contrary to written procedures.

Now, had I been in charge of the office responsible, my response would have been to have said ‘OK, let’s do that, I understand you are anxious and as you’ve offered to pay, let’s get it done.’ But no. That hasn’t happened at all.

Julie Anderson, appearing for Defra, argued that the bull posed a dangerous threat of spreading bovine TB and must be destroyed.

She submitted that there was “no evidence whatsoever” that the positive blood sample had been contaminated.

No doubt a little checklist on the inside cover of the file had been completed, signed by the officer in the field and/or lab, passed to the line manager who had given authority and then countersigned by a higher or senior officer. It is the mindset that if the checklist has been completed then everything is correct. The checklist can never be wrong. It is complete in its wisdom, everything that needs to be on it is there, anything that isn’t on it is an irrelevance. This is a culture that prohibits the employment of abstract thought. It is not common for a civil servant to be thanked for saying to himself ‘hang on a minute. . .’

But at the High Court in London Mr Justice McCombe quashed the notices of intended slaughter, ruling that the test taken in relation to Boxy was flawed.

Obviously nobody thought to tell Justice McCombe about the infallibility of the checklist. Or perhaps they did, but he didn’t buy it.

He refused Defra permission to appeal, though the department could still make an application directly to the Court of Appeal in a bid to take the case further.

Or they could just re-administer the test. You know it is possible that maybe a human being made a mistake. I know you’ve got best practice and standard operating procedures and training courses and one day refereshers and e-learning and all that guff, but sometime people just make mistakes. It doesn’t make them a bad person, it makes them a human person. Re-doing the test, making sure that it is robust and properly effective will settle this once and for all. The farmer even offered to pay for it.

Daniel Stilitz QC, for the claimants, said the Jacksons “are not wealthy people” and the case had cost them £28,000.

The judge ordered the defendant to pay £15,000 costs within 14 days.

So that’s fifteen grand on top of what DEFRA have had to pay to get themselves to this situation, as opposed to what, a couple of quid for a test? A test, which I cannot outline enough, the farmer has offered to pay for.

Of course there is no culpability here from DEFRA:

A Defra spokesman said: “We are naturally disappointed by this judgment and will carefully consider its implications and our next steps, including whether to appeal.

“The judgment does not, however, undermine our comprehensive TB-testing regime for cattle.”

They’ll appeal, believe me. The fact it will cost the taxpayer a small fortune doesn’t matter. Their rules, their decision. Who do these people think they are, going against DEFRA’s judgement? Don’t they know these people are highly trained experts in their field with years of experience under their belt? No. This cow must die. Without a re-test. It is impossible to think that a mistake has been made. Besides, we’ve got this checklist. . .

The spanking of public money is done unthinkingly. There is no connection between the tax take and the departmental budget sheet. It simply does not occur to them to not spend the money.

In my department, which I have decided to name the Dept of Beverage Transportation and Consumption Vessel Cleansing for comedy blog purposes, (it is headed up by Dame Greta Arseclown-Um Bongo following the retirement of Sir Norman Tedium-Custard in the new year), a number of front-line staff, most of them my friends, have toddled off into redundancy this week. However I received a message from the ‘Religion and Belief Champion’, Simon Supinely-Nice, about ‘Holy Week’. Could they not get it darned?

‘Savage’ cuts? Don’t make me laugh. I’d love to see what vital tasks are undertaken by Mr. Supinely-Nice over the course of a week, how much he is paid, and how many of those just handed their P45′s could have stayed on if he’d been given the push with his ridiculous post instead.

The cows refused to be milked.

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I’ll hijack an Orwellian metaphor here.

The farmer’s house is on fire and his well is empty, the only way he can put out the blaze is by dousing it with the milk from his cows. But the cows know that the farmer enjoys watching old celluloid movies on his home projector, and will sit in his living room gazing at the old movies, his only other source of light is a candle, which he sits atop the open reels of film.

“Why would we give you our milk, when your own stupid actions have caused the fire?” they ask. “It isn’t our fault.” They refuse to give their milk.

That is exactly what has happened in Iceland where the population have rejected, for a second time, a cunningly worded invitation to bear the fallout of the Icelandic banks and politicians incompetence.

I applaud their actions.

Private banks, egged on by a venal and short-sighted political class, bankrupted themselves in an orgy of lending they could not support and returns on investments they could never meet. Why the hell should the public of Iceland be forced to pay the debts that accrued as a result?

The Icelandic Prime Minister, Johanna Sigurdardottir, is not happy saying that this is the worst option that could have been chosen.

Really? For whom?

Why do you think that your population should pick up the tab for the idiocy of your class? If a private citizen in Iceland makes a stupid decision, who is there to bail them out? No-one, as is right. One has to take responsibility for one’s own actions. Unless, that is, you happen to be a politician or a banker. How wonderful it must be to live in a world where every success is yours and yours alone and every failure is down to everyone else.

Apparently, when Landsbanki went under, the British and Dutch governments had to reimburse 400,000 citizens.

Did they? Why?

When you are putting your money into a bank, you are investing in that business, and every business that that bank invests in. How many times are we told if it seems too good to be true, that’s probably because it is? This was a Ponzi scheme, the same thing we’ve seen repeated time and again since the 1920s and people still fall for it. Well, tough luck. Perhaps you’ll show a little more thought next time.

The governments can’t very well turn round and say that, as all over Europe and North America they were encouraging this behaviour, both from the banks and the individual savers. And having burned their fingers in the house fire, they now expect the cows to surrender their milk.

Politicians would argue that this bank held a good deal of public money from Britain in the vaults. Well, why? Firstly, taxes are not paid for local authorities to stick the funds in a high interest account. I expect the balance to be zero at the end of the financial year, if you’ve got some left over, then you’ve taken too much – you obviously didn’t need it. If the balance isn’t zero, then you reduce the tax burden for the next year. What you do not do is stick it in the bank and then come back for more, especially in light of the fact that levels of council tax went up pretty much every year under Labour.

Secondly, why the hell were you so bloody stupid? I can understand Joe Soap being taken in by slick advertising and glossy leafelets, but why the hell were supposed professionals taken in by this? Again, it was not your money, surely best practice would dictate that if you absolutely have to put your surplus in the bank, you pick the safest, most boring option. Local authorities and County councils should not be in the practice of making a profit, that is not what they are for. Any employee of the corporation that made this decision should be sacked for poor performance. Any elected individual involved should have this brought up at every available opportunity by his/her opponents at election time.

The Icelanders have said no. It looks like it will go to some court or other. Let them make their judgement, Iceland has not surrendered it sovereignty yet, what will these courts do if the Icelandic people refuse to pay if the court orders them to?

This is a very important point. Your government does not own you. Iceland owes no money, Iceland is its people. If it is judged that the government of Iceland owes this money, then declare the government of Iceland bankrupt – it doesn’t matter. It has no assets, all those buildings, roads, vehicles, all the trappings of nationhood, they aren’t owned by the government of Iceland, they are owned by the people of Iceland, the government is just the management company. If that goes bust, then you just make a new one. I really see no problem with that, for the politicians it would be a disaster, but for the man on the street, what difference does it make?

Go to Belgium and see how terrible life is in a country with no government. You’ll not see a difference, honest. Business still runs, kids go to school, you can still get the bus, the streets are still swept. That’s the frightening truth for the politicians, we don’t actually need them that much. Looks like the Icelanders may be realising that.

More power to them.

Update:

According to Nanny Beeb, by voting no, the Icelandics are jeopardising their chance of joining the EU as both the UK and the Netherlands could veto their entry.

What are the chances that the good people of Iceland are well aware of this, and having seen what has gone on in Greece, Ireland and Portugal, have no intention of getting involved? Not a nation it is easy to pull the wool over the eyes of, is it?

I also love this comment:

the British and Dutch governments had to reimburse 400,000 citizens – and Iceland had to decide how to repay that money.

Evidently the people and President of Iceland do not concur with that.

So, if you spank your wages on lottery tickets, I’ll stand your losses and then demand that the ‘good-causes’ reimburse me? Uh-uh, I don’t think so. I’d love to see how they’ll justify holding the population of a country liable for losses incurred via a private business, which they were silly enough to bail out without checking that the liability existed in the first place.

The perils of making a political decision rather than the right decision.

So, why do they need it then?

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The thing about public spending cuts is that everyone will agree that cuts need to be made, (unless you’re Mark Serwotka, in which case you just demand that the Treasury go down to the garden centre and buy another magic money tree), but of course the cuts can’t possibly come in the area which concerns you. It is economic nimbyism on an epic scale.

Hence this:

Sir Patrick Stewart leads actor protest over arts cuts.

Oh god, here we go. Now, I like Patrick Stewart, your favourite canis canis is a bit of a geeky Star Trek fan, and as soon as Patrick Stewart comes on TV and give me tips on how to be a cracking good actor, I’m all ears. When it comes to governance of the public purse, I’m not going to be quite so receptive to what he has to say.

Some of the UK’s leading actors have gathered in London to protest against the recent round of Arts cuts.

Sir Patrick Stewart, Penelope Wilton and Samuel West are among the stars who have signed and delivered a petition to Downing Street calling for a “coherent” arts policy.

How’s this for coherence? We don’t even have the money to run an effective navy, so we certainly don’t have money to spend on the arts. Is that clear enough?

Sir Patrick told the BBC he felt the cuts were “unnecessary”.

Well, he would say that, wouldn’t he?

The petition asks the government for an “arts summit” involving funding bodies and artists to give the industry a clear direction.

Bums on seats, darling. Bums on seats, that’s what it is all about. This is why London’s West End is the most profitable theatre district in the world. If people put shows on that other people want to see, the people go and the tills start ringing. If people put shows on that other people want don’t to see, you may as well rip the set up and put in a really large scalextric track because the people will stay at home and the tills will sit there collecting cobwebs.

Some 695 groups will get funding for 2012 to 2015 – down from 849 – while 110 new groups have been successful.

Funding for what? If this is some sort of troupe of lesbian amputee trans-gender Peruvian alpaca herders doing a season of Brecht on stilts, in Swahili, then why are they getting money? Where is the benefit to society here?

Yes, I understand that the arts are an important part of our heritage, but times change, and we are not living in a museum. If people don’t want to see it, you’re wasting your time. Demanding public money is akin to shouting ‘I don’t care if you want to come and see our show or not, you’re still going to be paying for a ticket’. Longbows are an important part of our heritage, but the MoD doesn’t retain a regiment of archers for old time’s sake. It just isn’t feasible.

Samuel West is also in on this, but perhaps he should stick to the script rather doing improv;

West said the arts industry was the “second most profitable sector in Britain”

Then why does it need money? If you’re making a profit. . .

Oh, hang on. You’re not counting the profit against the money thrown at you, are you? I could be profitable at selling second hand condoms if the government agreed to cover my losses.

I’m no businessman, but even I understand that profit = sales in – (money out + debts repaid). What you’re talking about is the sum left when you count sales in – money out, then + cash handed to you by the government.

I think the word you’re looking for is largesse. 

Commander Data, lay in a course for facepalm.

They are not responsbile for our predicament.

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I’m now getting very tired of all this banging on about how banks have caused us to live in penury, it is all their fault, and wouldn’t it be best if we just rounded all the bankers up and killed them? It just doesn’t wash with me.

The latest one is Barclays. Their UK tax bill has come to £113million, 2.4% of their global profit. I’m assuming that Barclays have a responsibility to pay tax at whatever rate is prescribed in each territory that they operate. It seems strange to me that people are demanding that Barclays hand over more money in the UK, despite the fact that they’ve probably had to do the same in Australia, Canada, Spain, Mauritania and the Federated States of Micronesia. I have no doubt that Barclays employ a small army of people to minimise their tax burden, but then that’s the system. Without wanting to get into a discussion yet again about the old avoidance vs evasion argument, I will simply say that if a person or an organisation finds a legal way to minimise their tax bill, it is naive at best to expect them to voluntarily hand over more.

Labour MP Chuka Umunna, of the Treasury Select Committee, who requested the detail, described it as “shocking”.

Mr Umunna said revelation showed that the bank was not paying its fair share towards a deficit they had helped create, despite having benefited from the government’s rescue of the financial system.

Whilst conveniently ignoring the fact that Barclays has taken not one penny of public money. So, if Barclays have helped create this defecit, then how? Evidence, please, you vacuous, vain little man because I remember your party stood on the sideline cheering them on, how everything was roses, we would have jam today, tomorrow and for every day after that. You incited this behaviour. Now, all of a sudden it is their fault.

Although Barclays was not directly rescued by the UK government – unlike Lloyds and Royal Bank of Scotland – it has been able to borrow extremely cheaply because of the Bank of England’s decision to slash interest rates, and because markets perceived that the government would not allow any big bank to fail.

So Barclays and other banks should pay more because of the Bank of England’s independent decision to keep interest rates low? Really? How does that work then? And markets perceived that HMG wouldn’t let a big bank fail.

Aye, there’s the rub.

You see, the mind boggling amount of our cash that has been poured into the banks has been poured into them by the politicians. It was their decision. They could have stood back and said ‘your business, your mess’, but they chose not to. They could have pointed out to the shareholders that it is their responsibility to ensure that the business they own is properly run, but they chose not to. They could have allowed the banks to go to the wall, like Woolworths, MFI and Zavvi, but they chose not to. What the politicians have done is the equivalent of a parent going down to the local car dealership and buying a top of the range car to replace the one wrecked by their teenage son, and then blaming the son for the fact that the family is going to be living off beans on toast for the next two years.

Even then, Northern Rock has been doing a pretty decent job of paying back the cash that was poured into it. So, the payout that we were forced to make by our politicians is being returned. It may be that the investment gets returned with a profit. So, where’s the issue?

The issue is this, the bail out of the banks is symptomatic of Labour’s poor governance. For thirteen years they spent at eyewatering levels. They took our money and wasted billions upon billions of it. It isn’t often I’ll agree with David Cameron, but when he says that Labour are in defecit denial, he’s quite right. But that denial conveniently stops when an ‘evil’ bank, that has taken none of our money, manages to minimise the amount it hands over.

Why the hell should they hand it over? This idea that extorting money from people, under threat of going to prison, to spend on stuff that we don’t want, don’t need and can’t afford, and then taxing the people that our money is handed to, so they can perform the whole cycle over again will somehow save the economy is rubbish. Every penny that government spends comes from our pockets, and every time it is recycled the amount diminishes, not increases. Every pound that passes through government (local or national) hands is clipped, trimmed and reduced. Government is expensive, inefficient and self-serving. Government can no more stimulate the economy than it can change the direction of the wind. The best thing the government can do to the economy is leave it the hell alone. Government produces nothing, it sells nothing, it leeches.

Government has a disastrous track record in delivery, that being, it doesn’t. Never has, never will, on anything. If government delivered on its promises, and those promises were acceptable to the electorate, then elections really would be a futile exercise because there’d never be a change. We’d all be so delighted with our politicians that we’d be crazy to kick them out. The fact that our history shows ‘promises-elected-failure- kicked out’, time and time again shows that government is utterly incapable of doing anything truly constructive.

They are obsessed with change, normally changing us so we fit in with their ideals. They simply cannot leave us alone. We have to change. It is always us. Never them. They engineer society then realise they need re-electing, they spin, they deceive, they lie, they steal, they make bad legislation, they interfere in things they don’t understand, they make things worse. Just because someone won an election doesn’t mean they actually know anything. They just had the nicest suits, the best TV adverts, the prettiest posters. That or the failure of their opponents was so complete that they would have won regardless.

People whine and complain that Barclays not handing over more tax than they are obliged to is unfair. No. What is unfair is that our money is taken from us and used to prop up a business (not Barclays) that has been poorly run. What is unfair is that our money is taken from us and spent on roller disco instructors. What is unfair is that our money is taken from us and given to people who do not wish to work. What is unfair is that our money is taken from us and given to an organisation that has not had its accounts signed off for 16 years, an organisation that costs us £323 million a day (according to the TPA’s figures).

Turn your attention to the politicians who extort your money, steal it for themselves, waste it on mad schemes and hand it to unaccountable, arrogant bodies. The banks are a smokescreen, and you’re swallowing it hook, line and sinker.

It isn’t fair and it sucks.

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Well, we’ve all had a couple of days to chew over the figures released in the spending review. For my part, the department in which I work is not the worst hit, but is certainly not getting off lightly. There will be a significant reduction in posts over the four year plan, but I think the majority of those will be covered by retirements, natural wastage and the opportunity for people to take a voluntary package, we’re also in a position where we can raise a bit of revenue independently of the public purse. It will take some reorganisation in the way that staff are deployed, both as individuals and as units, and that will upset some people.

In my district I think there’s the potential for a pretty major change which would be welcomed by some staff, but would also lead to some front line positions going. If that major change were to come to pass, one section of the press will probably have kittens. Quite how all of this will change how I work, or even if I work, remains to be seen. One thing is for sure, if I am caught in the storm, you’ll not hear any whining or complaining about it. I refuse to be a victim and will look at the situation as an opportunity rather than a tragedy.

The crying from the left has been predictable. It is going to hurt the poorest the worst and so forth. Some of the gloating from what is called ‘the right’ has also been predictable and is a very unbecoming way of behaving.

As stated before, I support these cuts. Not because I enjoy seeing people lose their jobs, but because we simply cannot afford the money we’ve been borrowing and then spending. We’ve never been able to afford it, there was no way we could afford it the day we took the credit card out and the bill has just got bigger and bigger.

It is true to say that I think the State does far too much. I want the power and intrusion of the State to be pared back to the bone, but I’d rather it was done as a gradual process, rather than by ripping it aside.

Here’s the shocking news; this spending review is not a ripping aside of the State’s and their client class’ addiction to borrowing money, taking money from the productive part of the economy and spending it. This spending review amounts (if I’ve understood the figures properly) to 3% of the defecit. It is nothing. It is even less if the figures from the TaxPayers’ Alliance are anywhere near accurate. This is a gradual reduction, and it hurts.

Is it fair that these public servants will lose their jobs? No. It isn’t. These people are not responsible for the defecit, it is the holders of the public purse who bear that responsibility. These people saw the jobs advertised and applied (and make no mistake, we’re not talking about managers of departmental budget losing jobs here, it will be the grunts) with the reasonable expectation that the people advertising the positions knew what they were doing and could afford to take the staff on.

Is it fair that the people who rely on public services will lose the support? No. It isn’t. These people have been conditioned to believe that the State is a cure all for their ills. The State has been the pusher which has got these people addicted to the heroin of quick fix money and having things done for them. Like all pushers, the State doesn’t care about the people in their thrall, they just care that the people are in their thrall, and their actions ensure that they live in hopeless squalor. Is it true to say that the cuts will hurt these people the most? Of course, they are the ones who have become enitrely reliant on a State which cannot love them, which cannot provide what they need and will always, always let them down. It is an abusive relationship of the worst kind.

Unfortunately, the simple reality of the situation is that these cuts have to be made. Nothing will change that, and hearing the coalition and Labour arguing over the depth and rate is like hearing two sailors in a sinking oil tanker arguing over whether they should bail it out with a saucepan or a jug.

Ask yourself this question; who is really to blame for the situation in which we now find ourselves? There are two obvious answers.

Firstly, the Labour party, it is they who have spent the last thirteen years spending and borrowing, taxing and spending, taxing and borrowing. Surely it is they who have overseen this disaster whilst making insane claims about abolishing boom and bust and non-existent prudence? No, say their supporters, it is the fault of a global recession that the borrowing and spending has had to increase, to prevent an even bigger economic disaster.

They will point the finger at the second obvious answer; the Conservative/Lib Dem coalition. It is they who are gleefully tearing through public services, abandoning those who rely on them, those who have no option but to rely on the State to look after them. It is they who are throwing these public servants on the scrapheap, pushing up the benefits bill whilst reducing the tax take. Of course the point about the public servants is missing one vital aspect. Granted these public servants may push the benefits bill up, but how much are they paid now? How does that total compare with what they’d be paid on benefits? Less, of course. Now, where does the money to pay these public servants their salary come from? Taxes. Where does the money to pay the benefits come from? Taxes. The point about the taxes paid by these public servants is a red herring as well, the tax take is not a tax take at all, the wages are taken from tax, paid out, and then a proportion is taken back. This does not represent a loss to the public purse.

Either way, the obvious answers are wrong, it is not the fault of the Labour government, nor is it the fault of the coalition. It is the fault of every single person who voted for the big three, not just at this election just gone, but in every election for the last thirteen years.

Every time it is the same. The Tories become more and more self serving, they destroy public services trying desperately to reduce spending. Then they are kicked out and a Labour government come in. They become more and more self serving, they spend huge amounts making large swathes of the public reliant on the manna they send and then the country ends up broke.

This cycle repeats, time and time again, the same pattern emerges on every occasion. Wasteful Labour, evil Tories. And it is all YOUR fault. You put them there, you go to the polling station, really believing that this time it will be different. Labour/Tories have learned their lesson, they’ve changed. Well they haven’t, never have, never will. Yet every time you allow yourselves to be hoodwinked, you refuse to learn the lessons of history.

‘Oh, but there’s no alternatives.’ Rubbish, there are a plethora of alternatives, the Greens, UKIP, BNP, English Democrats, Libertarians, the list goes on ad infinitum. Hell there’s plenty of people on that list I detest, but can they really be any worse than what we have? How many times do these people have to fail for you to learn the lesson? You put them there, and you removed them, then you put them back in again, why did you think it would be any different this time?

Look at the people running the show. Do you think Cameron and Osborne really care about you? Or do they only care about having power and their own wealth? Do you think Clegg and Cable give a damn about you? Or do they only care about their European project and being able to press some of the buttons? Do you think Miliband and Harman give a flying fuck about you? Or do they only care about their social engineering plans and having control over your life?

Just as the poor are made reliant on the State for their survival, these politicians are reliant on YOU putting them in the position where they can ignore you and do what they hell they want. Remove your support, take your succour back from these people who lie, who cheat, who steal, give it to someone else.

All about Terry.

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I want to tell you about Terry. I’ll call him Terry, because it isn’t his name.

Terry is a real person and works in my civil service department. He’s been around for God knows how long. I joined more than a decade ago and he was an ‘old lag’ then.

Terry is never late, he never complains, he’s absolutely never off sick. He is easily more than competent and takes each new initiative and quick-stop-turn-around-run-off-in-the-other-direction change in his stride.

Terry has MS. He’s known about it for some time, but over the last few years it really has taken its toll. Like I said, Terry never grumbles.

His place of work is a ‘permanent’ building. This building is in effect a portacabin, sat up on breeze blocks. In the summer it is unbearably hot, in winter it is arctic. In the spring and autumn, rain water comes flowing in through the door from outside. Terry never grumbles whilst others moan and whine. He merely snorts and raises his eyebrows before getting back to work.

At least twice a week he’s on parade for 06:30. Lord knows how he does it, how he can physically get himself out of bed for such an early start is a mystery to me. Lord knows how much sleep he gets the night before. Movement is not easy for him, in order for him to walk more than 5 metres, he has to lean on a colleague’s shoulder and move at a snail’s pace. Terry never grumbles, he merely accepts the cards that life has dealt him and gets on with it.

When other members of staff moan about certain tasks that they don’t want to do, desks which they don’t want to sit at, Terry never grumbles. All he asks for is a few minute’s grace so he can get from one place to another with the assistance of a work-mate. You won’t hear Terry say ‘can’t do that, it’s my back/neck/arm/leg/wrist/ankle’.

When the latest authoritarian and hostile missive designed to demotivate the staff, to make them jump ship, comes through from the managers, Terry just smiles ruefully and shakes his head, he’s seen them come and seen them go.

Terry never has a day off sick. Never. His fear is that his first day off sick will be his last day of work. Although he wouldn’t admit it, Terry loves his job. Terry loves the people he works with. The people he works with love him back.

Terry’s only vice is a sneaky fag, propped up on the railings outside the main entrance. This is against the rules, the department has decreed that any smoking on departmental property is verboten. Even the most ardent of anti-smokers in the team would kick off if someone prevented Terry from having his puff a couple of times a day.

Terry will without doubt leave with a very nice pension, but given his physical condition, one can only wonder how long he’ll benefit from it. He’d probably be better off taking medical retirement to get some use of it, but his job keeps him socially active. When Terry does go, he’d be unable to find a venue suitable for his retirement do, there’d be hundreds wanting to turn out to see him off. He probably wouldn’t have one though, Terry doesn’t like a fuss.

To our management Terry is just another drone, another name on a document.

There’s no moral to this story, no happy or sad ending. I just wanted to put a human face to the grey anonymous people given the ‘civil servant’ tag. As has been clearly documented here I support the cuts, but not at the expense of Terry and those like him. Unfortunately he and his kind will be the first to suffer. Our management, senior national and middle local, will always make sure their army of box ticking, equality observing, diversity valuing, best practice policy making suits will be safe.

They don’t know Terry, they have no contact with him and when they do visit the shop floor all they see are a crowd of drones. They don’t really know what these drones do, they know how valuable their army of box ticking, equality observing, diversity valuing, best practice policy making suits are.

Bring on the cuts, wield the axe, but for the love of God hit the right target. Terry and his colleagues are spread thin enough as it is, and it breaks my heart to see them treated in such a shoddy fashion.

We civil servants are not all officious, unfeeling automatons. Some of us care deeply about the jobs we do, and despite every obstacle put in our way, we try to do it as well as we possibly can. This country can have a civil service of which it can be proud, but I am worried that the rotten flesh will be cut out and kept, whilst the healthy is thrown aside.

For shame.