KHOODEELAAR! telling again: The Daily Mail and Max Hastings are aiding and abetting lies and liars in their latest peddling of the mantra for attacking the public when the fact is that the economic crisis has been caused by Big Business looting and robbing the public in the UK.. That the Daily Mail is part of the Big Business assault programme on the ordinary public is proven by the Daily Mail group's persistent refusal to report on the wastefulness of CrossRail. And the Daily mail is allied with all the touts and stooges of Big Biz when it comes to peddling the ‘cause’ of the looting multinational corporations. As is being seen this week, ordinary people from Athens to Madrid to Paris are out calling for an end to the Big Biz rule......As is the CLEGGERON brigade now getting deeper in the hole in the bunker behind the green in Downing Street London SW1. Is Dave Cameron’s silence on the crassness of Crossrail a private signal issued to assuage his alleged rival Boris Johnson, who is performing Ken Livingstone's role as the tout for Big Business? [To be continued]
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Take this medicine or Britain will go bust
By Max HastingsLast updated at 9:26 AM on 8th June 2010
At last he has said what had to be said. Yesterday, David Cameron embarked upon the most difficult task of his premiership: to reconcile the British people to the painful changes in our national life which are coming-soon to a lot of places near you.
During the election campaign, Cameron pussyfooted as much as his rivals. Now, in an impressively statesmanlike speech, he declares bluntly what almost every economist agrees: the Labour government hocked Britain to the eyeballs. Only by draconian action can we restore ourselves to solvency.
PM pledge: David Cameron talking to students at The Open University in Milton Keynes. His plans to tackle the economic situation will affect our whole way of life
'What a terrible, terrible waste of money,' Cameron said yesterday. 'This is the legacy our generation threatens to leave the next. The challenge of statesmanship is to take difficult decisions in the public interest. People's lives will be worse unless we do something now.'
Most Daily Mail readers know what he means: we cannot spend more than we earn. Every cheque the public sector writes must be funded by taxing the private sector, which is groaning under the burden; the state workforce has become bloated and overrewarded; Brown has been playing fantasy finance for more than a decade.
The problem for the new government is that there are millions of other people out there - citizens of the client state created by Labour - who reject these realities. Labour's leaders are still lying through their teeth, striving to convince gullible voters that cuts are simply the work of wicked Tories bent on squeezing the poor.
Many people sincerely believe that the fiscal crisis is the fault of greedy Tory bankers, whose follies they are being asked to pay for. They do not understand that the banking collapse merely forced the Government to face the consequences of its own profligacy, which was no fault of RBS or even of the hated hedge-fund managers.
Over the past decade, 20 per cent of Britain's notional economic growth has come from public spending - the figure is 30 per cent in Scotland and other state dependencies. Gordon Brown constantly abused the word 'investment' to justify draining the Exchequer. Real investment produces profits. Labour's long spree produced only costs. Those costs must now be dramatically reduced, or the country will be bankrupt.
Cameron said yesterday: 'I want this government to carry out Britain's unavoidable deficit reduction plan in a way that strengthens and unites the country.' He talked much about consultation and public debate. But he also admitted: 'Inevitably, we are going to make a lot of decisions people won't agree with.'
Gordon Brown created two Britains: a public-sector Disneyworld, in which rewards are unrelated to performance and immune from downturns or recessions; and a private sector struggling to fund this, while battered by global competition.
Under Brown, average public sector wages have overtaken the private sector - £459 a week to £418. Retirement ages are lower, pensions indexlinked. In some areas of Britain the public sector accounts for as much as 70 per cent of economic activity, more than in former communist countries such as Poland and the Czech Republic. Since 2008, private sector employment in Britain has fallen by 978,000 while Labour has boosted the state workforce by 110,000. The private sector today generates no more cash than it did six years ago, while public spending has rocketed.
None of this is sustainable. There must be big cuts in state employees' numbers, rewards and benefits. By no other means can the country recover its economic balance. But it would be na've to expect the turkeys to vote for Christmas. They are more likely to vote for strikes. There will be unionled protests such as we have not seen since the days of the poll tax.
Nick Clegg said emolliently at the weekend that the Coalition's cuts will be nothing like those made by Margaret Thatcher. He is right - but not in the way he meant. They must be far more severe, because Thatcher's government never faced an annual deficit amounting to 11 per cent of government spending.
Cameron said nothing yesterday about how cuts will fall, because he first wants to persuade the nation of the gravity of the crisis. But he has made it tough on himself by ringfencing the NHS and foreign aid, and even tougher by agreeing the Lib-Dems' price for joining a coalition - increased tax allowances for the low-paid.
That act of generosity seems reckless, when Capital Gains Tax must be dramatically raised to pay for it. The LibDems are traditionally the silly party, and no more could have been expected from them. But any gratitude the Coalition will gain from its largesse to the poor will be far outweighed by the unpopularity of cuts.
If Chancellor George Osborne takes the axe to the public sector as he should, for all Cameron's good words about consultation and national unity, it is going to be hard to hold our democracy together, to gain the consent of sufficient people to see this thing through. Relatively few, seeing life going on as usual around them, recognise how bad things are. We are wholly unaccustomed to sacrifice, to the notion of making do with less this year than we had last.
That is why the Government is pressing ahead with its proposed levy on bank profits, against the advice of economists who believe it will damage Britain's financial services industry. Cameron knows voters will revolt if they see bankers pocketing fat bonuses and holidaying on yachts, while the rest of the country struggles to service its mortgages. It is politically essential, even if economically dangerous, that sacrifices should be seen to be shared.
But the critical task is to reduce the cost of the state, far greater than the profitmaking sector can fund. We know that doctors, teachers, nurses, policemen and some - though by no means all - civil servants perform vital functions and deserve decent rewards. But Cameron's task is to convince them that they cannot be cordoned from the realities facing the country.
I found it inspiring to listen to Cameron yesterday, because he sounded every inch a prime minister, and one who sees where he must go. Since the Coalition was formed, I have been fearful of the Lib-Dems, because they are traditionally wet enough to water-ski on. But it may just prove that the thrill of sharing power suffices to persuade them to get real.
One prime ministerial speech is only the beginning of a huge process of public education which the budget on June 22 should continue. Only by repeating again and again to the British people that no nation can spend more than it earns is there a chance of getting through the next five years without serious social unrest, possibly even Greek-style mayhem on the streets.
Cameron is talking like a real national leader. If he goes on to act like one, he will deserve the support of all those of us determined that Labour's two Britains should be reunited.
