Who's sharpest with a big axe?
WHO would you most trust wielding an axe: David Cameron or Gordon Brown? The next election depends on your answer.
No matter who wins, BILLIONS will be cut from the bloated government budget. But neither is ready to admit it yet.
Last week, both went to war over a figure which I came up with. So perhaps I can settle this dispute once and for all.
Britain's austerity budget will start next April. VAT will shoot back up and higher taxes will kick in. It'll hurt - and get worse.
Do the sums, and Labour plans for spending to be cut by 7 per cent after the election. NHS, police, teachers - everything. The Tories claim they'd spare health. So (I calculated) they'd have to cut other budgets by about 10 per cent.
When I published that estimate, Brown was cock-a-hoop. He seemed to think I had uncovered official Tory policy.
Problem is, so did Andrew Lansley, the Tories' hapless health spokesman, who went on radio repeating it as a truth.
Catastrophe
What a plonker. Cameron isn't ready to discuss cuts. Like George Osborne, he's terrified of being seen as a hatchet man.
Tough. Because their job won't be to run this country, but save it. Radically reduce state spending, to avert catastrophe.
To see what Britain could be in for, look at California where Governor Arnold Schwarze- negger left cuts far too late.
Now firemen and police are laid off. Remaining public sector workers are told to accept sharp pay cuts. Taxes can't rise any more.
"Our day of reckoning is here," Arnie says. "Our wallet is empty. Our bank is closed." He's telling the truth. No one in Britain will.
And by "no one" I do include the Conservatives. Even now, Cameron uses deceptive terms like "spending restraint".
What he means is the harshest cuts attempted in UK postwar history. Without cuts, Britain will join California in the fiscal A&E ward.
But Cameron won't have to shut parks, like Arnie. He has easier targets like the 'science budget' and wasteful overseas aid budget. New questions must be asked. Like: why should Britain send aid to China if it has to borrow the money from Beijing? We must also end the pensions apartheid, where state workers pocket vastly more than their private sector counterparts.
So the choice at the next election is simple. What do you prefer: Labour cuts, or Tory cuts? Who can do it better?
Brown has wrecked the public finances and can't even bring himself to tell the truth about the cuts he plans. He's out of the game.
He just can't face up to his debt crisis. He's like a mate of mine, who put Visa statements in the bin, unopened, until the bailiffs came.
Every day, the national debt rises by a scandalous £340 MILLION. A bill we leave for our children to pay.
Polls show the public are well ahead of the politicians - with a stunning 72 per cent demanding cuts.
The truth is that Labour and Tory plans for cuts are, at present, identical. The only difference is who will axe what. Brown could have said: "I'll cut better." Idiotically, he has instead chosen to lie instead - claiming that he wouldn't cut at all.
Expensive
People KNOW that government spending is bankrupting our country. We can see the waste, everywhere.
The quangos. The NHS supercomputer that doesn't work. The expensive welfare state that breeds poverty.
"Cuts" is no longer a four-letter word. But we need the right cuts: cutting fat, not flesh.
Barack Obama came to power promising America the "change we need". In Britain, it's the case of the CUTS we need.
And the opportunity facing Cameron is to say that only he can be trusted to deliver them.
WHY does Margaret Beckett think she's qualified to be Speaker? As Foreign Secretary she took suspiciously long trips to India, accompanied by her husband. As an MP, she voted to cover up MPs expenses - and charged taxpayers for hanging baskets in her home. If she really wants to clean up parliament, she should leave it.
WORD IS that Stephen Carter, fired as Brown's spin doctor then made a Lord to shut him up, is leaving for a "lucrative" career option. Please let it be the writing of his memoirs.
* You can read more from Faser Nelson in today's printed edition of the News of the World. Fraser is also political editor of The Spectator.
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This article has 6 comments
I work in a public sector agency, one that has seen a big rise in it's budget under New Labour. Most of the additional resources were used by middle managers to build up their little empires with admin and support staff who just spend most of the day staring at Facebook and Bebo as there actually isn't the work to justify their jobs while frontline staff are snowed under with casework and the mountain of new procedures brought in by the empire builders. The same agency has blown £30 million on a new IT system that is currently 3 years behind schedule and is not due to come into service until next year. The contract with the supplier runs out in 2012 so almost as soon as the implementation is completed they will have to start tendering for a new system! In my office a new laser printer was bought only for management to discover that it wasn't compatible with the systems we use! So that expensive printer sat in a corner for 6 months before being flogged second hand! There are stories like this all over the public sector about endemic waste, inefficiency and incompetence. I promise you that I could sack about 30% of all public sector workers in Britain and the public wouldn't notice any difference, they may actually notice an improvement as frontline workers wouldn't have to spend so much time filling and re-filling out forms for the empire builders and could get on with their jobs! Those on the frontline can see this and are fed up with Labour for allowing this waste to happen.
By Fed Up Civil Servant.. Posted June 14 2009 at 10:17 AM.
Richard / Keith:
You are living in a dream world. Labour have published in thier 2009 budget cuts of 7% across all departments. That is a fact.
For every policeman, nurse, doctor and school teacher that Brown quotes as being lost if these cuts were implemented read ... Labour Cut ...
And don't forget these Labour cuts are based on an economy recovering at 3.5% per annum. This is not likely either. So the level of Labour cuts will be much higher.
Based on what has happened since Brown became PM do you seriously believe that he is telling you the truth? "End to Boom and Bust" - "British Jobs for British Workers" any other slogans you care to remember?
By Steve.. Posted June 14 2009 at 10:53 AM.
Gordon Brown massively increased Govt spending during the boom years by taxing the middle and coping classes. Well the coping class is barely coping now & the middle class has seen jobs disappear and its standard of living plummet.
There can be no more tax rises.
As a result of Gordon's ineptitude in running the economy, we are now billions & billions in debt - which has to be serviced (interest) & eventually paid back. The only way we can do that is to find more money which means taxing more or cutting other spending.
Gordon, in the last Budget already factored in 7% of cuts in real spending. Heavily disguised, intended to deceive - it is classic Brown. But he was found out by the Institute of Fiscal Studies, who studied Brown's own figures & blew the whistle on his so-called 'investment.'
All the Tories have done is take Brown's figures of a 7% cut & adapted them. They will, they say, ring-fence spending in the NHS and overseas aid, which COMMENTATORS have concluded will mean 10% in other Departments. So far, Cameron has not confirmed this.
Either way, cuts are coming & come they should. There is massive waste in Govt spending & cutting back budgets does not need to mean a reduction in front-line services. It can come from the bureaucratic tick-boxing management Labour has imposed; the Quangos; the diversity/outreach workers; the bloated administration of the NHS and the excessive costs of our Govt - both Houses should be reduced in size.
By Boudicca.. Posted June 14 2009 at 10:44 AM.
richard and keith
i think you are both deluded about public spending. this country cannot carry on throwing taxpayers money away, it has to stop otherwise YOUR tax bills will rise drastically and i wouldnt think you would like that?.
brown spouted prudence for TEN years and see where its got this country.
By mark.. Posted June 14 2009 at 9:19 AM.
Exactly, Richard. The Tories have scored a monumental own-goal with this 10 per cent cuts promise. The new Labour leader will now be the next PM
By Keith Price.. Posted June 14 2009 at 12:36 AM.
You are way over the top about public spending. We don't need the huge cuts you are advocating - and you are wrong to compare us to California.
The cuts you want would throw thousands out of work, at a time when it looks quite likely we will be coming out of recession. This would tip us right back into it, with huge knock on effects for everyone else as the newly jobless would have much less money to buy goods and services, thus leading to even more people losing their job.
Sounds just like the rubbish prescription we were served up by Margaret Thatcher and her cronies. Never again!
By Richard.. Posted June 14 2009 at 12:14 AM.