I'd quite forgotten how much I enjoy reading Richard Littlejohn. Here's a sample or two from his recent article:
"For the past 20-odd years, this column has made a decent living documenting the insanity and waste in Britain’s Town Halls.
If all else failed, there was always the Guardian jobs pages on a Wednesday to dig me out of a hole.
The recruitment of five-a-day enforcers, lesbian bereavement counsellors and assorted real nappy outreach co-ordinators was guaranteed to raise a giggle."
...
"So they cynically close libraries, day centres and swimming pools and give P45s to school dinner ladies and lollipop men. When it comes to the pain, it’s women and children first.
Meanwhile their lavishly-remunerated public relations departments synchronise the campaign against the ‘Tory cuts’ — aided and abetted by the Labour Party and the BBC, which pumps out a relentless bombardment of anti-Government doomsday propaganda.
This was, of course, exactly what Gordon Brown intended when he beggared the British economy to create a giant client state.
He set a bear trap for any incoming Conservative government, just as he did with the 50p top tax rate. Brown knew he could rely on the BBC to blame the ‘cuts’ on his successors. And he gambled that most people are so stupid they would fall for it. The indications are that he was right, up to a point."
9 comments:
"I'd quite forgotten how much I enjoy reading Richard Littlejohn." So long as you aren't believing him, I don't think it will cause any permanenet harm to your intellect :). He's not too good on separating myth and reality sometimes, like http://liberalconspiracy.org/2011/02/17/littlejohn-slams-non-existent-hop-scotch-lessons-to-asian-women/
Paramedics? Nurses?
While 7 or 8 of my colleagues are being made redundant it is somewhat harder to see the joke.
Sorry Neal, I know as your a Libertarian and I'm defiantly more on the socialist bent, we will never see eye to eye on the matter of public spending.
I have to point out a few things from my own experience. Nothing about the cuts being made (at least in my town,) is cynical or ideological.
My local council has never employed a "Lesbian Liaison Officer" or any of the other "Non-Jobs" the media love to go on about.
They have yet to release one press release condemning the cuts and the cuts they have had to make (in the order of 20% this year alone,) as much as possible has been made by trimming the already efficient back office.
After 8 years of Gershon Efficiency drive the audit commission had held the council as a case study for others to follow, this however was not taken into account when Pickles delightedly started wielding his axe.
I have no doubt their are terrible inefficient councils out their and as always headline grabbing exception proves the norm, why let the truth get in the way of a good story.
Yes, there are probably some hard but necessary cuts coming in. But oddly enough I don't see those chief executives who are earning more than the prime minister cutting their salaries. What I am seeing is a lot of labour controlled councils cutting things that will cause the biggest outcry and blaming it on coalition cuts - basically using it as a political stick with which to beat the 'evil tories' - rather like Scargil in fact.
Don't get me wrong. I think the tories and the lib dems are as much a bunch of wankers as labour. I don't see them cutting the billions squandered by the DFID and the ridiculous amounts wasted on 'green' energy or that cesspit of corruption and waste the EU.
Quite right, TJ, it isn't a joke, but sometimes humour is the only answer in the face of idiocy you are powerless to stop.
Have they trimmed the pensions down to private sector levels, Kat? Anyway, the axe being wielded is to cut away 14 years of labour madness we simply cannot afford. The problem with it is that what's being targeted by government is not what is being hit by the councils.
And sorry, Kat, I have to laugh at your 'I have no doubt that there are terribly inefficient councils out there'. You seem to be implying that there might be efficient ones, which would be a first for any public sector organisation.
ian.x precisely the same inability to separate myth from reality as found in most papers, and on the TV - the Guardian and the BBC being prime offenders. Don't believe what you read or see - check it. Scepticism is something we should all apply.
Yes i am Neal.
I assume you've done an independent review of all public sector organisations in order to make such a sweeping statement?
Also no they have not trimmed pensions, they are however massively increasing the employees contribution. Also i think you've fallen again for the right wing propaganda. Local Government pension is nowhere near the gold-plated pension of Civil Servants. In fact Lord Hutton suggested that Civil Servants pension be reduced to Local Government levels and that Private pensions should be raised to that level. He "rejected a race to the bottom".
Right wing media likes to get us plebs to argue over who gets the most scraps, so that we don't look up at the the massive Banquets our "Betters" enjoy. Instead of arguing over someone's pension being better, we should be demanding that all pensions provision is better.
Hmm, I see blogger decided to remove 80% of what I had written; never mind.
I am at least in accord with you on this: the tories and the lib dems are as much a bunch of wankers as labour.
And how precisely will they raise private pensions to public sector levels? Let me think ... take more out of worker's wage packets and more off the companies. Great idea: spend more money the country doesn't have. Yup let's demand better pension provisions for all. In fact, let's demand free money for everyone all the time. I mean, it's 'government money' so it grows on burgeoning state-owned money trees everywhere.
Of course, if Mr Brown hadn't butt-fucked private pensions there wouldn't be such a disparity.
And as far as all the cuts are concerned, you illustrate the point perfectly, but with one minor alteration:
LEFT "wing media likes to get us plebs to argue over who gets the most scraps, so that we don't look up at the the massive Banquets our "Betters" enjoy."
Those betters being highly-paid government employees (in the civil service, local govt and quangos) who take no cuts while frontline workers go to the wall.
Booker:
"The BBC loves to tell us nightly about those terrible “cuts”, but never admits that public spending is still scheduled to soar over the next four years, from £696 billion to £739 billion. The £130 billion a year we pay in interest on our public debt – which is still rising by £3 billion a week – has become easily the largest item of state expenditure, projected by the Taxpayers’ Alliance to rise to £190 billion by 2014, equating to £7,600 for every household in the land."
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