Monday, May 19, 2008
The tax & spend days of Labour are coming to an end
Mail: Cameron calls for Government to 'live within its means' in return to Thatcherite values
''...David Cameron today echoed Margaret Thatcher by promising "good housekeeping" to purge waste from government and - eventually - deliver tax cuts. In a keynote speech he promised that a future Conservative government will use the saved funds for "essentials" and to ease the tax burden on families.
...''
Posted by hpwatcher @ 04:11 PM (814 views) Add Comment
18 Comments
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1. whiteknight said...
just a couple of things plucked at random:
Britain has not assimilated efficient workflow technologies well enough. This needs to improve and then real productivity will be enabled.
Britain needs to abandon some things that are more fair when considered in theory - but when put into practice cost signficantly more to implement that supposedly unfair systems and hold back productivity. There is one specific area i am thinking of. Simplification is superior.
2. Mytimeis Nigh said...
At last, someone states the obvious, we need to 'spend within our means'. I feel sorry for him though, as he's most likely to win and this mess took a decade to create and will need a decade to sort it out.
3. Retiredbanker said...
D.C. just keeps on getting better and better.
He is the man!
4. tyrellcorporation said...
About bloody time. The press will jump on them though and ask 'which childrens wards will you be closing first then?'. I just hope the Tories stick to their guns, win the argument about cutting waste and we have the mother-of-all purges. I read today that after the much heralded 'bonfire of the Quangos' speech by Broon in 1995 the annual spend on Quangos has doubled to an estimated £100,000,000,000!
5. cyril said...
Tyrell - the quangos have expanded because he's cut the numbers in the civil service. You know how it works.
6. cornishman said...
Mark Siara comes up with some good ideas for saving taxpayer money here
Mark - are you and the HPC "mark" one and the same person?
"Well how about this slightly radical proposal. Scrap family tax credit, child tax credit, child benefit and reform the income tax bands, national insurance (a tax by any other name) and the level of personal allowance. Replace this mash-mash with an increased personal allowance and a single tax band. Say a £10,000 personal allowance for all citizens (including pensioners) and a tax band of around 40% (which includes a portion of NI). Simple and straightforward... ....With significant savings on administration, more funds could be released to the populace and the net cost to the Exchequer could be maintained. The side advantage of this proposal is that it would encourage more people back into the workplace and reduce their dependence on benefits."
7. whiteknight said...
replace 40% with 10% and you are closing in...
8. dude said...
"Any woman who understands the problems of running a home will be able to understand the problems of running a country." Opps -- she balls-ed up big-time then. So the truth is out. The Tories want to reduce taxation -- hence public spending. So we went through 18 years of disaster, with everything falling apart, significant under investment. Yet people still don't seem to have learned the lessons of the 80s and 90s -- if you want decent public services you have to pay for them.
You get the same diatribe from people who don't like to see public spending going on about the 'waste' in bureaucracy -- but without seeing that bureaucracy is the thing that makes big organisations work. Look at schools -- they took that away from local authorities (because many were Socialist-leaning) and gave it directly to the schools themselves. So now we have the same roles that existed once in the LEA, now multiplied with no coherence within a particular area. The Tories creating more bureaucracy. But the Socialists haven't got their mits on it, so that's ok then.
Get the Tories back in, and we'll definitely have more cost cutting -- if you thought it was bad by 1997, that's just the start.
If you're poor or old the future looks very bleak indeed.
9. whiteknight said...
oh i forgot 10% is too easy. you wouldn't need to employ an accountant to work out your tax - you could do it in your head.
Silly me.
How about 10.3567% then?
10. whiteknight said...
@6 dude:
As opposed to what? The incredible infrastructure and services investment of the last 10 years that have ..... hang on.
11. notaneconomicsguru said...
This appears to be merely more opportunist politics from a consumate policital opportunist. I don't believe he would have dared to make such flabbly statements until very recently - he'd have been absolutely crucified. Now people are hurting he can relatively easily bribe them with sound-bites about cutting waste and vague promises of tax cuts. That's an easy thing to say and exactly right for the mood of the moment. But what exactly is he going to cut? By how much? What reduction in service delivery/quality will be necessary? What will the net benefit in terms of tax cuts be? What are his tax cutting priorities? Until he his dragged kicking and screaming into talking policy detail he should be treated with 100% skepticism. After all we don't want to have yet another hugely popular "sound-bite" leader who promises much and delivers comparatively little do we??
12. planning4acrash said...
Without monetary reform, and a gold standard, Conservatism results in degredation of our standard of living without the feaux socialist safety net. This is not the Libertarian model of freedom. In this game of left and right, you are damned if you do, damned if you don't. Except if you are a financier, as the recipient of all the printed fiat money, that you can nicely hedge against inflation, whatever the weather.
13. jonb said...
Dude,
The NHS is the fourth largest employer in the world. Only the Chinese Army, the Indian Railways and Walmart employ more people.
The NHS is not the largest healthcare provider in the world. It is nowhere near being the largest. Nor is it the best in the world. In terms of quality of care, it is probably below average. You would probably have to go to a third world country to find somewhere with a lower quality of care.
Throwing more money at the NHS is not going to help things, and there is certainly plenty of scope for finding efficiency savings without reducing quality of care.
14. tyrellcorporation said...
"Tyrell - the quangos have expanded because he's cut the numbers in the civil service. You know how it works."
Cyril you are joking aren't you? ...aren't you?!?
15. Dbc Reed said...
These calls for a return to the Gold Standard are ridiculous.Recommended reading, because it is short, about housing and available on the Net: is Alan Crisp's The Working-class Owner-occupied House of the 1930's.This shows that all those suburban semis built round London in the 30's arose from a) coming off the Gold Standard b) consequent lower interest rates c) cheap land. It is the last of these that needs concentrating on.
16. shipbuilder said...
This is more soundbite rubbish from the blue Blair. If he actually came out with proposals like the ones Cornishman highlights, he might be taken seriously.
There are efficiency savings to be made in every organization, but to achieve it would require an utterly huge effort - a complete culture change that is beyond the ability or political will of the majority of the fat, lazy, amoral gravy-train jumpers in the House of Commons.
17. Dillardpruitt said...
It's difficult setting up systems to cope with increased funding. I think at least part of the problem with the NHS has been the rapidity of the increase in monies being poured in, not the increase itself.
Also, the lack of trust in those delivering services seems to have lead to a great deal of cash being spent on creating systems that aim to replicate the discipline and responsiveness of the market place.
It will be interesting to see whether Cameron actually does cut much of the 'fat'. Efficiency savings in the civil service would yield tiny gains (quite major cuts have already taken place in some departments ie Home Office anyway). Its health and education that are the biggies. Are they going to get rid of all those new teaching assistants for instance?
18. titaniccaptain said...
As shipbuilder said.........