What friggin’ cuts?

“In next week’s Guardian experiment in journalistic role-swapping, an established political and economic journalist will have a crack at writing an article on teenage pop culture.”

For some people it’s an article of faith: if there’s a Tory government then there are cuts and austerity. Stands to reason, innit.

Oddly I have less contempt for Harris than many other journalists from the Guardian. He at least seems literate and far less of a race hustler than many of his ilk.

A few days before Rishi Sunak emerged from 10 Downing Street to warn of forces “trying to tear us apart” and his belief that our streets have been “hijacked”, there was a news story about a national emergency that has yet to spark any such theatrics. The Guardian reported the findings of a new study by the children’s charity Kindred2, in which 1,000 primary school teachers in England and Wales were asked about the developmental condition of kids starting school, and the widely shared sense that “school readiness” has long since fallen into decline. About one in four children entering reception year, they said, are now not toilet-trained. Nearly 40% “struggle to play or share with others” and 28% “incorrectly use books”: their instinctive response to being presented with one, it seems, is to swipe or tap it, “as if using an electronic device”.

that may well be true – I’d argue that the response to COVID was far more responsible than any ‘austerity’. We locked up the entire population apparently thinking there’d be no adverse impact to doing so. The long term consequences of that decision, the single greatest criminal act by a government in recorded history are likely to be horrific. Can’t recall Harris being especially fazed at the time but then I don’t recall his output for the last 4 years in photgraphic detail.

As for his complaint, I think perhaps, as Steve and others mention,with such pressure on services at every level then importing a city the size of Birmingham annually and aspiring to increase those numbers to an additional London annually probably isn’t a good idea but that gets no mention anywhere in his article or the paper more broadly.

If kids seem unfamiliar with books, that probably reflects the woeful number of public libraries that have gone, with even more set to close in the midst of local government’s latest financial crisis. Meanwhile, austerity’s most vivid manifestation – simple poverty – is surely at the heart of what is now evident in thousands of reception classes.

Any council closing local libraries instead of getting rid of every post related to DIE and anything related to Climate Change is making a conscious decision to prioritise. Racism trumps literacy. I agree that’s reprehensible but is that the government’s fault?

We all need to understand what this will mean. Kids will carry on struggling at school and needing help with some of the most basic life skills.

I wonder why African immigrants are sending children back to Nigeria or Kenya for basic education (for example) – perhaps there’s a clue in the curricula of these countries. I have never met anyone of any race from either who mentioned ‘DIE’ (unless they had spent extensive time in the US or UK) either. A causal link perhaps?

Pensioners’ care packages will be serially hacked back;

I thought the people on the boats were supposed to be filling gaps in our care workforce? Are you saying that’s not the case?

the crisis in special needs education will grind on.

Number of Special educational needs children in China, with vastly superior academic results to us, remains constant – zero.

Crime will worsen;

But the police will make sure misgendering and Transphobic Tweets are met with armed helicopters

our cratered roads will continue to deteriorate;

This from a man who warned against permitting a referendum on Net Zero

far too many towns will be forlorn places, with shut-down swimming pools and the most paltry public transport.

If we bring in a million people from abroad and condemn any attempt to remove them as a ‘breach of human rights’ then that will work wonders.

For some people, the word “cuts” will carry on being a visceral term for what is missing from their lives; for others, austerity will be the ambient, low-level feature of everyday existence that hardens up their sense of being ignored.

I think that’ a risk – after all 8 years after the referendum on EU there has barely been a single law repealed. So they’re quite used to being deprioritised.

“Home Office rubber stamping 1.4 million visas a year, and turning all of our hotels into doss houses for foreign thugs.”

In my experience this is most likely because of the extortionate fees they charge for visas. We are in the five year queue for a spouse residence permit (one year to go) and have paid over £20,000 in visa fees to the HO to get here. The final hurdle will require another approx £7500 unless they change the goal posts again which has been a regular experience during this farce. Even with all the official paperwork and massive process to obtain it, the hostile reception and questioning by immigration officers at the airports tells me that their own checks before issuing the visa cant be trusted.

I don’t suppose I’m telling anyone here anything they don’t know, but it’s useful to see it in black (or blue) and white. What they mean by “cuts” is that spending stopped going up for a bit.

(Note the scale. 2018 money, per capita. The big-government fans can’t wriggle out of it with talk of inflation or a growing population. The government spends damn near twice as much as it did 25 years ago. To be fair, between 2011 and 2014 that figure fell, a little, from £13k to £12.6k; about 1500 quid more than the great socialist Titan, Gordon Broon, had ever spent. It was nudging £13k again by 2020, and is now well over £14k. Which is very close to three times what it cost to win WWII. “Austerity” my arse.)

Van Patten.
Your comment about Special Ed needs numbers in China chimes with something I’ve been chuntering about elsewhere.

Do you have any links to that one please as it would be rather helpful.

I’m also willing to bet that the increased hidden social care costs incurred by councils in places like Bradford are another reason councils are going bankrupt ( Nowt to do with rates of cousin marriage & their inevitable consequences amongst a certain subset of the enrichment of course)

Zaichik – yes, they do treat legal immigrants like shit.

Let’s not kid ourselves that any “checks” are going on though. Our immigration system is expensive, time consuming and produces awful social outcomes because it’s a self-licking ice cream cone run for the benefit of civil servants, Big Charity and shitty FTSE 100 companies.

It’s a coalition of cunts.

I wish I inhabited the Britain the ‘Guardian’ imagines, where – according to Caroline Lucas – Sunak is part of a rabid right wing cabal.

Steve,

“Let’s not kid ourselves that any “checks” are going on though. Our immigration system is expensive, time consuming and produces awful social outcomes because it’s a self-licking ice cream cone run for the benefit of civil servants, Big Charity and shitty FTSE 100 companies.”

Oh, they’ll be checks. But, will they be useful checks that sort a highly specialised guy from someone who will be a drain on the state? Will they usefully sort between persecuted individuals and an economic migrant? Why does every immigrant claim to be a Christian? Because it scores more points. It’s easy to game.

And really, most politicians don’t care. They view all of this as being about optics. They do things to look good, not because they want a problem fixed. They want you, the voter, to stop worrying about it and go away.

“Oh, they’ll be checks. But, will they be useful checks that sort a highly specialised guy from someone who will be a drain on the state? Will they usefully sort between persecuted individuals and an economic migrant? Why does every immigrant claim to be a Christian? Because it scores more points. It’s easy to game.”

I suspect the checks even when very probing and detailed are pointless – I can vouch for that because whenever we re-enter the country, my spouse entering with a Biometric Residence Permit is subjected to extremely hostile and detailed questioning from the border force immigration officer. Questions which have already been answered in detail during the application process, so at the point of re-entering the country with a proven identity would be pointless unless the Home Office either no longer knows the answers or the immigration officers do this because they like intimidating and harassing visitors to our country.

ADD and ADHD are not concepts that appear to have widespread recognition.

I think China uses the traditional treatment methods.
WHALLOP. SHUT UP! PAY ATTENTION!

It worked when I worranippa.

– “What sodding austerity?”

The effect which occurs when government cannot raise more money but squanders ever more on things which do not provide value. The level of taxation is such that if the coutry were competently run, everyone would be delighted at the provisions, and there would be great scope for tax cuts without reducing services. They mystery is where is all the money going!

Allegedly per capita spending has gone down.
Which must also mean per capita tax take has gone down too, despite being at all time high in £ and % terms.

Importing a few million low waged would have that effect.

“The mystery is where is all the money going!”

Are you blind, deaf and dumb?

Its obvious where the money is going. Its going to pay people to sit at home doing nothing, while immigrants are imported to do the work those on benefits refuse to do. Its going to educate, house clothe, provide healthcare and feed said immigrants even when they are working, especially their dependents. Its going to pay government employees to sit at home ‘working’ while getting absolutely SFA done. Thats when they aren’t off work ‘sick’ instead. And of course they all get a pay rise every year, regardless of whether they achieved anything or not. And of course there’s hundreds of thousands more of them – the government payroll rises inexorably. Its going to give 10% pension rises to all State pensioners whether they need it or not. Its going to pay for such useful things as diversity officers and drag queen weeks. Its paying through the nose for a train set to the Midlands that nobody wants, or needs. Its going to pay shed loads of money to wealthy people for renewable energy – wind turbines, solar farms etc etc, all the while productive enterprises are being closed because energy costs are through the roof. It goes to pay local town planners to stop people building the houses we need. It gets given to charities that then use it to lobby the government to change the government’s own policies. It gets wasted by civil servants buying anything for the public sector, who always manage to buy the crappest product at the most expensive price, that is not the right thing for the job anyway. It gets given in benefits to people who ear up to £99k/ yr. It gets given to a police force that refuses to enforce the law, picking and choosing which laws its likes at any given time.

Everywhere you look the State is hosing cash at things and getting less and less done (or indeed actively making things worse) for the money. And you wonder where its all going?