Latest Labour car crash interview - Diane Abbott's fantasy mathematics

One area in which Education in this country apparently needs to be improved is a crash course in basic numeracy for senior Labour politicians.

Diane Abbott - and let's not forget, if you vote Labour you are voting for her to be Home Secretary - had a truly dire car-crash interview on LBC  in which she produced several completely different numbers - none of which made sense - for the cost of the 10,000 police officers Labour are promising to recruit.

First she suggested the cost would be £300,000 (about £30 per police officer), then £80 million (still a lot less than police officers are paid) and then she explained that this was the first year of a five-year programme which would cost £298 million a year from year five onwards - less ridiculous but even that is light by the time you allow for salary, national insurance, equipment and other on-costs.

She also got confused about whether the number of police officers to be recruited was 10,000, 250,000 or "2,000 and perhaps 250."

Even more seriously, Diane Abbott had no good answer to the question of whether Labour was proposing to spend the same money more than once: the source of funds they are proposing to use to finance the extra officers (reversing cuts in capital gains tax) has been spent several times already in different Labour pledges on education, arts and sport.

For those who are not of a squeamish disposition, the transcript and recording of Diane Abbott's interview with Nick Ferrari of LBC are available here.

Comments

Jim said…
Erm yeah,

10,000 police officers, costing £80,000,000 in year one.

this means its £8,000 each. Well at least they wont have income tax deductions. Though supposing that they are all aged between 21 and 24, then to avoid having to arrest the government for breaking the living wage law (7.05 per hour) then they can work 1,135 hours per year each. or just under 22 hours a week each.
thogh there is nothing left for any kit, or training.

Also CGT is a pretty easy one to avoid, thats one of the primary reasons that cutting it was clever. It means its not worth it for people to pay the accountants to get around it, its cheaper to pay the tax. so by cutting the tax you actually increase the tax take. Old freind the laffer curve again.

But then hang on again, arnt labour always campaigning to "increase the living wage". so to do that for public sector workers, they would need to increase the taxes paid by private sector workers, but to do that they would need to have the private sector employ more people, but if they rasie the living wage then the private sector will inovate and automise and employ less people who would earn the living wage, so they need to increase the tax burden on the skilled workers in the private sector. who can pay the accountants if its worth it........

Its quite eye opeining when you sit down and go though the effects of a proposal isnt it Diane.
Jim said…
Tired of this sort of thing being shot all over the place. How we need a higher living wage as people on supermarket tills cant afford to live on it. I often argued it would be better to encourage employers to provide training. but no, got to be more per hour for a no skill job.

I said that would cause unemployment, but no, the rich supermarkets can pay it.

its now 2017, there is usually only one manned till in Asda, and its usually the ciggy kiosk, the rest are automated self serve checkouts arn't they. and one skilled worker who "fixes" them.
Jim said…
If we recruit the 10,000 police officers over a 4 year period we belive it will be about £300,000

erm yeah as pointed out, £30 each, or just over 4 hours per year each, at living wage.


"it will cost.....it will coooooossssst erm about 80 million pounds" so thats 8 grand each as above comment.

"we get to that figure as we anticipate recuting...25,000 police officers a year at least over 4 years looking at earnings of police a year especially police officers in london."

Then apparetly the cuts in GDT will cost the taxpayer 2 billion pounds, of which there are better ways of spending that money.

(I thought cuts saved the taxpayer money, but there we go, what do i know?

honestly is this for real???? I ask that seriously, as i think even a couple of decades ago Spitting Image would have thought twice before putting out a skit like this, thinking its pushing a joke that bit too far.
Jim said…
here you go may as well enjoy the lot
Chris Whiteside said…
I presume she was supposed to give the third set of figures but even those are light when you take into account all the on-costs including training and equipment as well as salaries, pensions, tax and NI, administrative costs of employment etc.

Nick Ferrari pointed out (pity he had to add "the Conservatives would say") that Labour have already spent the alleged saving several times.)

But the other daft thing - think you've got the point, Jim, but it didn't perhaps get the attention it deserved - was her reference to the reduction in Capital Gains Tax "costing the taxpayer" £2 billion.)

Whiskey Tango Foxtrot? To a socialist it might be seen as costing the exchequer £2 billion (though I think your critique of that argument based on the Laffer curve is dead on) but it certainly doesn't cost the taxpayer money when you cut taxes!
Jim said…
one other note on this one, but arn't the police force funded from Council Tax? so how does increasing CGT increase funding to the police?

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