Restore Britain scarcely acknowledges that history. Instead, it assumes that Britain’s current problems arise because government has become too large. That is the central proposition on which everything else in the paper depends. Cut spending. Cut taxes. Reduce regulation. Withdraw the state. And, it claims, prosperity will follow. That is an extraordinarily simple view of how an economy works.
Works for me.
The thing is we’re pretty fucking far from the Richard Scarry version with police, firemen and lollipop ladies.
According to Spud, Restore wants to go back to Major level public sector. Which wasn’t workhouses and beggars. Actually, fewer beggars because we didn’t have East European gypos saying “beeeeg isshoo”
A 64 page report into how to cut the state?
He is possessed by religious zeal saying:
“They provide no evidence of any consequence to support their claims, which are asserted, but not supported by analysis ”
So I only need to find one item of evidence in the report to prove Spud wrong then. There’s only 11 links and 34 graphs and charts sourced from the ONS and OBR in it.
no evidence of any consequence
He obviously thinks the 11 links, 34 graphs and charts sourced from the ONS and OBR are of no consequence.
As one might expect.
Well, of course they are of no consequence; they were not produced by the Murphatollah.
Assuming the graphs and charts produced by govt agencies / quangos are worthless suggests that those agencies etc are not productive. So a budget cut is deserved…
The first win comes from getting all those people who do nothing useful off the public payroll.
The second win is that their non useful output previously included a lot of cycles making other people in both the public and private sectors less productive.
The third win would be to reemploy these people doing something constructive, but this is a tenuous aim with limited chance of success until we can build Ark Fleet Ship B.
I think your first and second might even be the wrong way round. Paying them but not letting them do anything would be far from ideal, but possibly better than what we have at the moment.
I propose a “European Union Connectivity project” that they can all actively participate in. Build a land bridge from skegness to holland by chucking them all in the north sea.
What’s Holland done wrong?
This…
I don’t mind the land bridge, seems a way to make the Wastards finally useful.
BUT WHY SKEGNESS, OF ALL PLACES?!!!!
It’s so bracing.
I think we can build the arks. They don’t need to be spaceships. Just something that will make it to the South Atlantic before it founders.
They can have gainful employment as ballast on aircraft doing over-water flights . . .
That’s the gist of it. But problems remain: once there’s precedent for all the follies of government, how is any firm going to trust that the bollocks will not be re-introduced? Frinstance, would you plunge capital into the North Sea just because Eyeliner Andy cut the relevant taxes? He, or his successor, could reverse the move in a moment.
But that’s true of all this shit. Feed-in tariffs. EVs not paying road tax or congestion charges. Pension and ISA rules. Our entire, world’s-most-complicated tax system. What the government giveth the government can and will take away (to give to someone favoured), which is why I have as little as possible to do with their bait-and-switch incentive schemes. They’re out to fucking scalp me.
On the subject of Mascaraed First Minister. Wasn’t there once a photo of him in his underpants, possibly for dating site purposes? I’m sure I remember it but image searches fail to find it.
Fortunately.
Are you thinking of Chris Bryant? Who might also sometimes wear mascara, but maybe not in public.
You’re right. That image doesn’t easily come up in an image search. Lots of references to it but… I do think it should prominently re-enter the public sphere. I will continue searching.
Or possibly this one.
Chris Bryant. Now Sec of State NI.
Yet we are told that 20 year contracts for windmills are absolutely watertight, with gold-plated guarantees in the event of legislative change.
Of course we could just screw all the businesses involved, but there’s a cost involved with that as well….
Per Ronald Reagan, people claim there are no simple answers, but there are, there just aren’t any easy ones.
That’s my experience of DiY at home: The simple tasks are never easy and the easy tasks are never simple.
Meanwhile Healey wants to borrow even more for “investment”. In the Gordon Brown sense of the word I expect.
It’s disturbing how the same grim features and shaved head can morph from suggesting a reassuringly no-nonsense defence secretary one week to a grimly destructive socialist chancellor the next.
If you want a metric of the sheer submissive uselessness of the Tories in the face of the Fabian steamroller, it’s that – that use of ‘investment’.
From the point where Brown redesignated government spend as ‘investment’, it would have cost the Tories nothing always and everywhere to use the word ‘spending’ and, then, when they got back on the Number 10 bog seat in 2010, they could officially have reverted to the prior usage.
To do that would have required of the Tories, what? an institutional memory spanning more than about two months? somewhat more spine than an octopus? a desire to speak the truth?
But zero courage. It would never have cost them votes.
And so, with that one tiny but enormous capture of the language they ceded a battlefield the size of a continent.
Do I hate the Tories enough?
It’s impossible to hate them enough!
What are Britain’s problems?
Invasion, crime, health care, housing, energy cost, loss of freedom.
Why? Because government has become too large.
Or too goofy.
What are Britain’s problems?
Fundamentally, taxpayer funding of perversion.
I do like the drift of the argument. So all problems could be solved by a series of public lynchings? Sounds admirably simple.
ALL WITHIN THE STATE
NOTHING OUTSIDE THE STATE
I got ChatGPT to summarise Restore’s plan and it’s all really, really sensible. Things like scrapping stamp duty, ending the triple-lock.
I have to say, I’m wondering about these Restore chaps. I haven’t seen anything this sensible from Reform.
My suggested government cut: scrap Miliband’s return flight from the USA. Works from every angle, as far as I can tell….
Don’t be ugly. We don’t want him.
He can do less damage on the left of the pond. I was told the Josh Lyman character dealt with him last time.
In casual garb