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It’s a bizarre UK we live in where we pump hundreds of billions in QE into a narrow echelon of the economy and already rich pockets and that’s OK. But now we apparently have to scrimp and save on tens of billions that would be spent on society and in the economy as a whole.
Funnily enough, the markets – and the neoliberal loons who serve them politically – think them getting money to prop up share prices, profits and bonuses is a very sustainable approach. And any other government spending is reckless abandon.
We’re getting rinsed. And conned/gaslit into thinking that’s the only way forward.
Pronouns: He/Him
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Austerity Revisited on 10:27 - Oct 15 with 1806 views
Austerity Revisited on 10:11 - Oct 15 by Darth_Koont
It’s a bizarre UK we live in where we pump hundreds of billions in QE into a narrow echelon of the economy and already rich pockets and that’s OK. But now we apparently have to scrimp and save on tens of billions that would be spent on society and in the economy as a whole.
Funnily enough, the markets – and the neoliberal loons who serve them politically – think them getting money to prop up share prices, profits and bonuses is a very sustainable approach. And any other government spending is reckless abandon.
We’re getting rinsed. And conned/gaslit into thinking that’s the only way forward.
But 'left' and 'right' now agree that we have to keep the markets happy!! The narrative has been set.
Yes, and good choice of inverted commas. “Right” and “Left” look pretty much the same on way too much fiscal policy. It’s Right and New Right all the way now.
It’s a lot simpler to see our major parties and politicians as middlemen greasing the way for moneyed interests and their own personal gain than it is to see them as serious democratic representatives looking out for the wider interests of the UK population, society and indeed the actual living, breathing economy.
Certainly saves time too.
Pronouns: He/Him
0
Austerity Revisited on 10:49 - Oct 15 with 1690 views
Austerity Revisited on 10:11 - Oct 15 by Darth_Koont
It’s a bizarre UK we live in where we pump hundreds of billions in QE into a narrow echelon of the economy and already rich pockets and that’s OK. But now we apparently have to scrimp and save on tens of billions that would be spent on society and in the economy as a whole.
Funnily enough, the markets – and the neoliberal loons who serve them politically – think them getting money to prop up share prices, profits and bonuses is a very sustainable approach. And any other government spending is reckless abandon.
We’re getting rinsed. And conned/gaslit into thinking that’s the only way forward.
1st thing they should be looking at is Politicians expenses, they are taking the piss why should tax payers have to pay for their heating, Netflix.
0
Austerity Revisited on 10:59 - Oct 15 with 1676 views
1st thing they should be looking at is Politicians expenses, they are taking the piss why should tax payers have to pay for their heating, Netflix.
Agreed. But small potatoes in the bigger con.
Look into their declared and undeclared interests, donors, favoured lobbyists and high-profile supporters instead. That’s the real racket we’re propping up by pretending we have a democracy.
Pronouns: He/Him
2
Austerity Revisited on 11:25 - Oct 15 with 1622 views
Why do they use the term ‘efficiency savings’? It really annoys me. They are not efficiency savings, they are cuts, pure and simple. He implies people sit around all day contributing to TWTD. He should say he’s asked Departments for a list of services to be cut, if he is honest. But he’s not.
They are not interested in ‘efficiency’ at all. They see hammering the public sector as a popular policy win for the next election because nobody knows what work the public sector really does. That is why yet again in Johnson’s period, Departments were told there was to be a headcount cut of 91,000. They didn’t care where it came from. Police, Nurses, Army, prisons, local authorities. who cares. Just get those numbers down for the election to come.
JRM goes to war on ‘Whitehall waste’. What waste? Who? Where? They don’t know and don’t wish to.
It’s known by all bar the tories that Cameron/Osborne’s 2010 austerity programme was economically stupid, but they weren’t interested in the economy. Only their weird ideology which persists to this day. Numbers employed by the Civil Service rose from 2016. Will the Government say why? No because it’s embarrassing to them. Numbers rose for one reason only. Brexit. Their insane idea.
The biggest problem these people have is that the genie is out of the bottle. Cuts to put money into the pockets of the wealthy - a redistribution of wealth from the deserving poor to the rich was not just Kwarseng’s policy. He just did what the tories wanted. It’s not changed and no amount of badly constipated, concerned expression from that failed idiot Hunt or any of the others can change that.
3
Austerity Revisited on 11:50 - Oct 15 with 1555 views
Austerity Revisited on 11:25 - Oct 15 by Churchman
Why do they use the term ‘efficiency savings’? It really annoys me. They are not efficiency savings, they are cuts, pure and simple. He implies people sit around all day contributing to TWTD. He should say he’s asked Departments for a list of services to be cut, if he is honest. But he’s not.
They are not interested in ‘efficiency’ at all. They see hammering the public sector as a popular policy win for the next election because nobody knows what work the public sector really does. That is why yet again in Johnson’s period, Departments were told there was to be a headcount cut of 91,000. They didn’t care where it came from. Police, Nurses, Army, prisons, local authorities. who cares. Just get those numbers down for the election to come.
JRM goes to war on ‘Whitehall waste’. What waste? Who? Where? They don’t know and don’t wish to.
It’s known by all bar the tories that Cameron/Osborne’s 2010 austerity programme was economically stupid, but they weren’t interested in the economy. Only their weird ideology which persists to this day. Numbers employed by the Civil Service rose from 2016. Will the Government say why? No because it’s embarrassing to them. Numbers rose for one reason only. Brexit. Their insane idea.
The biggest problem these people have is that the genie is out of the bottle. Cuts to put money into the pockets of the wealthy - a redistribution of wealth from the deserving poor to the rich was not just Kwarseng’s policy. He just did what the tories wanted. It’s not changed and no amount of badly constipated, concerned expression from that failed idiot Hunt or any of the others can change that.
I'm sure there is some waste but never in the tune of billions of pounds.
Efficiency savings take time and money to actually implement. They don't come for free, anybody who has ever tried to automate manual processes or speed things up knows there is an upfront cost.
They just don't want to say austerity because they know it won't go down well.
Austerity Revisited on 10:59 - Oct 15 by Darth_Koont
Agreed. But small potatoes in the bigger con.
Look into their declared and undeclared interests, donors, favoured lobbyists and high-profile supporters instead. That’s the real racket we’re propping up by pretending we have a democracy.
Yeah totally agree but I’d heard a politician who claimed 250k that’s ludicrous. There’s no doubt that they are serving donors more that Joe Public.
0
Austerity Revisited on 12:27 - Oct 15 with 1480 views
Austerity Revisited on 11:50 - Oct 15 by DanTheMan
I'm sure there is some waste but never in the tune of billions of pounds.
Efficiency savings take time and money to actually implement. They don't come for free, anybody who has ever tried to automate manual processes or speed things up knows there is an upfront cost.
They just don't want to say austerity because they know it won't go down well.
Of course there is things you can improve upon and do better. I have a good idea of what is done well and what isn’t. It’s all about ‘continuous improvement’ to use a McKenna expression. But the tories are not interested in that. They just want bodies out of the door and they don’t care who or what the impact is.
This can lead to a crazy situation where, for example, most departments get rid of their project teams because they are not ‘front line’. There you go, headcount cut, useless mouths gone. Savings, happy voters! Then you get an unforeseen event. It happens. You then need the very people you’ve just shipped out.
The solution is hire people in. You then wind up paying companies huge sums of money to do work that could have been done far cheaper by the people you’ve just booted out. You might even wind up paying £1800 a date for somebody to take notes at a meeting. If this is ‘efficiency’ then I’m King Kong. It isn’t, it’s politics.
During Austerity, everything was looked at and scrimped on. Some ideas were fine, such as ‘hot decking’ - giving people laptops, having a desk ration of 8 people for every 5 desks (roughly) to make better use of office space. I’d seen and worked that way in the private sector. Not so good was the brilliant saving the made procuring cheap photocopy paper. Dirt cheap. Shame it broke all the machines and cost £1000s to replace the stock and fix the things.
Then there was the mice. They saved a huge sum of money cutting the requirement for rentokil or whoever to do what they do. After the building was running alive with mice, chewing cables you name it, including ministers’ offices, there was a rethink.
I’m all for change, improvements, doing things better. I worked in that sort of world for years. What I don’t think is sane is a crude policy of ideological headcount cut and s0d the consequences.
2
Austerity Revisited on 12:30 - Oct 15 with 1477 views
Austerity Revisited on 11:50 - Oct 15 by DanTheMan
I'm sure there is some waste but never in the tune of billions of pounds.
Efficiency savings take time and money to actually implement. They don't come for free, anybody who has ever tried to automate manual processes or speed things up knows there is an upfront cost.
They just don't want to say austerity because they know it won't go down well.
I'm fairly well placed to comment on this, as I joined the public sector in 2008, so have seen the impacts of austerity up close.
I think it probably was legitimate to call some of the cuts from 2010 onwards 'efficiency savings', though definitely not all of them, as there were some areas that had become a little bloated. But those continued cuts had already gone way too far by the time austerity supposedly ended a few years ago. Tory councils then compounded the effect of reduced government funding by freezing council tax unnecessarily for a number of years - the compound impact on council budgets of missing years of 2% increases is enormous and will have made very little difference to council tax bills in the grand scheme of things.
But where were are now there is simply nothing left to cut that won't result in very significant service impacts - councils are already worried about the ongoing cost burden for things like social care (there are some very scary graphs out there!) and this is impacting on services across the board. And I think people tend to forget that it isn't just those in need that rely on council services, there are a number of universal services (roads, waste services for starters) that could deteriorate further.
I was born underwater, I dried out in the sun.
I started humping volcanoes baby, when I was too young.
Austerity Revisited on 11:25 - Oct 15 by Churchman
Why do they use the term ‘efficiency savings’? It really annoys me. They are not efficiency savings, they are cuts, pure and simple. He implies people sit around all day contributing to TWTD. He should say he’s asked Departments for a list of services to be cut, if he is honest. But he’s not.
They are not interested in ‘efficiency’ at all. They see hammering the public sector as a popular policy win for the next election because nobody knows what work the public sector really does. That is why yet again in Johnson’s period, Departments were told there was to be a headcount cut of 91,000. They didn’t care where it came from. Police, Nurses, Army, prisons, local authorities. who cares. Just get those numbers down for the election to come.
JRM goes to war on ‘Whitehall waste’. What waste? Who? Where? They don’t know and don’t wish to.
It’s known by all bar the tories that Cameron/Osborne’s 2010 austerity programme was economically stupid, but they weren’t interested in the economy. Only their weird ideology which persists to this day. Numbers employed by the Civil Service rose from 2016. Will the Government say why? No because it’s embarrassing to them. Numbers rose for one reason only. Brexit. Their insane idea.
The biggest problem these people have is that the genie is out of the bottle. Cuts to put money into the pockets of the wealthy - a redistribution of wealth from the deserving poor to the rich was not just Kwarseng’s policy. He just did what the tories wanted. It’s not changed and no amount of badly constipated, concerned expression from that failed idiot Hunt or any of the others can change that.
The NHS is much better now that there aren’t doctors and nurses lollygagging around in A&E departments waiting for a car crash or some natural disaster to happen…..properly utilised nowadays….oh wait…hmmm..
0
Austerity Revisited on 12:55 - Oct 15 with 1412 views
Yeah so "nothing like being misrepresented! " You are going to have to show your workings after reading through that thread.
I'm not in favour of throwing people over cliffs.
You, on the other hand, seem comfortable with that result.
Nothing I've said there is remotely near allowing markets to dictate anything. I favour following a course of action that doesn't involve lots of poor people dying and that doesn't end up with fascism.
How is Tooting these days?
0
Austerity Revisited on 13:34 - Oct 15 with 1371 views
You, on the other hand, seem comfortable with that result.
Nothing I've said there is remotely near allowing markets to dictate anything. I favour following a course of action that doesn't involve lots of poor people dying and that doesn't end up with fascism.
How is Tooting these days?
So if you had managed to read the whole thread and the point is made again on here I at no point have agreed with Trussenomics. The point is that if you use the markets as the basis of attack then don't complain when it is used to attack more radical policies that you might agree with. I will chalk you down as another who is incapable of nuance.
The one near Mitcham?
Edit....ps imagine calling someone a "sad sack" on a forum.....now that really is sad. Why so personal?
[Post edited 15 Oct 2022 13:36]
"They break our legs and tell us to be grateful when they offer us crutches."
So if you had managed to read the whole thread and the point is made again on here I at no point have agreed with Trussenomics. The point is that if you use the markets as the basis of attack then don't complain when it is used to attack more radical policies that you might agree with. I will chalk you down as another who is incapable of nuance.
The one near Mitcham?
Edit....ps imagine calling someone a "sad sack" on a forum.....now that really is sad. Why so personal?
[Post edited 15 Oct 2022 13:36]
Yes, you deny approving Truss, however you ridicule the need for urgent action taken to avert massive harm that would have been caused by her policies.
That's got zip all to do with markets.
GCSE radical politics above real people's lives and the food on poor kids' tables.
Nuance my ar$e.
0
Austerity Revisited on 14:01 - Oct 15 with 1313 views
Yes, you deny approving Truss, however you ridicule the need for urgent action taken to avert massive harm that would have been caused by her policies.
That's got zip all to do with markets.
GCSE radical politics above real people's lives and the food on poor kids' tables.
Nuance my ar$e.
Help a sad sack out and illustrate where that ridicule happened. Reality and your perception of it do not seem to be good friends.
Are you another of Footers' online personas?
"They break our legs and tell us to be grateful when they offer us crutches."
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