Pickled Politicians

The economic straits we find ourselves in today are, at the base due to politicians. Obviously, Labour were running the country into the ground, but the Coalition of the Unwilling is fiddling at the edges. The reason for this is because the Civil Service is not the reliable resource it once was (largely due to Blair) and politicians rely too much on vested interests, whom they insist are advisers.

Politicians are completely disconnected and have no idea why energy prices are rising so rapidly (eh, Huhne), do not know how the City works (or doesn't) and stumbles to answer straightforward questions because everything outside the arcane world of Westminster is a mystery to them. Listen at PMQ's and all you hear is point scoring and satisfaction at causing some opposition embarrassment, with only accidental contact with the workings of the real world.

So the first step in recovery for the UK would be if we had some adult politicians in parliament, people who felt that they were elected to serve, well, someone! Harriet Harman is outraged that the Coalition is not planning to grow the economy and she bases this on her assertion that they are getting rid of twice as many public sector workers, than the private sector are taking on. Being Labour of course she sees public sector workers as key elements of the economy. Or maybe she speaks up for them because they vote for the Labour Party.

The private sector is the engine and small businesses particularly so. This is also true in America and, saddled with Obama not enough is being done there either. It is a broad problem of socialism across the Western world and is something else that we need to get rid of and quickly.

It is clear that consumers are a key driver of economic performance and the lack of money in people's pockets is part of the current problem. Fingers are regularly pointed at the financial crisis as the reason we have no money to spend, but it isn't. The biggest problem is the government. Tax is too high both on income and on economic life, hitting you on almost everything you buy, on every business transaction. Government does things it has no business doing such as green projects in pursuit of a chimera and blatant and consistent waste, The latter of course very much a growth industry due to the ignorance highlighted earlier.