Forgetting the Deficit
Labour leader Ed Miliband's aides have admitted that he "forgot" to mention the passages on Britain's deficit which he had intended to include in the speech, lasting slightly over an bour, which he delivered from memory at Labour Party conference.
Sometimes, as with the bacon butty incident or William Hague's baseball cap, political leaders get an extraordinary amount of flak over something incredibly trivial.
Sometimes however, they get flak over things which are more important than they might at first appear, and IMHO the failure to mention the deficit is one of those times.
Talk of deficits sounds dry and boring to many people and the measures required to live within our means are never popular. But the trouble is, the conseqences of ignoring a deficit of the size the British government still has - never mind the even larger one the last Labour government left behind - are disastrous. The problem can be expressed in seven words:
YOU CAN'T SPEND MONEY YOU HAVEN'T GOT.
For the avoidance of doubt, this is an attempt to put into very simple language that you can only spend money that you have either already earned, or borrowed against the security of assets you already have and income you expect to earn. And if you borrow too much the eventual consequences are likely to be painful.
If you or I had an income of £30,000 a year, and kept spending £40,000 a year and failing to do anything about it, sooner or later we would end up in serious trouble.
That's exactly the position, with the numbers many times larger, in which Labour left the public finances. The present government has cut that deficit significantly, but it is still terrifyingly large - way too large to be sustainable.
Governments have more room for manouver than an individual householder but it is not limitless. The consequence of years of huge deficits is that even at today's very low interest rates the government is spending twice as much paying interests on its' debts as the entire defence budget.
On present spending projections and if as is expected those interest rates start to go up a bit in the next three years, the government will be spending as much paying interest on its' debt as on Education and Law and Order put together.
Let me put tat another way
By 2017-18, interest payments will cost the government £71.3 billion.
That is more than the current annual budgets of the Home Office and the Department for Education, which between them spend around £65 billion a year.
(Read here for more detail.)
So when you wonder why more of the taxes you pay are not translating into more teachers, more doctors, more nurses, and more bobbies on the beat, a big part of the answer is that the money is required to pay the interest on the money Gordon Brown, Ed Balls, and Ed Miliband borrowed when they were in government.
Some of the opposition parties - Labour, UKIP, and the rest - occasionally point that the deficit is still far too large. But none of them has dared come up with a concrete proposal which would cut the deficit by as much as 1% (Mr Balls' proposals fell well short of that even before he started dashing around like a demented Santa Claus and offering £20 billion of sweeties in the form of extra spending.)
So if Ed Miliband "forget" to mention the deficit, that says something worrying about his priorities. The deficit is a huge problem which has the capacity to derail everything that the next government, whoever wins the election, might want to do.
Speaking for an hour without notes is very difficult and it can appear to be a very impressive trick - but at the end of the day, that's all it is: a parlour trick.
If you can't speak for an hour with no or minimal notes without forgetting to mention essential issues, you would be far better advised to stick to the autocue.
Sometimes, as with the bacon butty incident or William Hague's baseball cap, political leaders get an extraordinary amount of flak over something incredibly trivial.
Sometimes however, they get flak over things which are more important than they might at first appear, and IMHO the failure to mention the deficit is one of those times.
Talk of deficits sounds dry and boring to many people and the measures required to live within our means are never popular. But the trouble is, the conseqences of ignoring a deficit of the size the British government still has - never mind the even larger one the last Labour government left behind - are disastrous. The problem can be expressed in seven words:
YOU CAN'T SPEND MONEY YOU HAVEN'T GOT.
For the avoidance of doubt, this is an attempt to put into very simple language that you can only spend money that you have either already earned, or borrowed against the security of assets you already have and income you expect to earn. And if you borrow too much the eventual consequences are likely to be painful.
If you or I had an income of £30,000 a year, and kept spending £40,000 a year and failing to do anything about it, sooner or later we would end up in serious trouble.
That's exactly the position, with the numbers many times larger, in which Labour left the public finances. The present government has cut that deficit significantly, but it is still terrifyingly large - way too large to be sustainable.
Governments have more room for manouver than an individual householder but it is not limitless. The consequence of years of huge deficits is that even at today's very low interest rates the government is spending twice as much paying interests on its' debts as the entire defence budget.
On present spending projections and if as is expected those interest rates start to go up a bit in the next three years, the government will be spending as much paying interest on its' debt as on Education and Law and Order put together.
Let me put tat another way
By 2017-18, interest payments will cost the government £71.3 billion.
That is more than the current annual budgets of the Home Office and the Department for Education, which between them spend around £65 billion a year.
(Read here for more detail.)
So when you wonder why more of the taxes you pay are not translating into more teachers, more doctors, more nurses, and more bobbies on the beat, a big part of the answer is that the money is required to pay the interest on the money Gordon Brown, Ed Balls, and Ed Miliband borrowed when they were in government.
Some of the opposition parties - Labour, UKIP, and the rest - occasionally point that the deficit is still far too large. But none of them has dared come up with a concrete proposal which would cut the deficit by as much as 1% (Mr Balls' proposals fell well short of that even before he started dashing around like a demented Santa Claus and offering £20 billion of sweeties in the form of extra spending.)
So if Ed Miliband "forget" to mention the deficit, that says something worrying about his priorities. The deficit is a huge problem which has the capacity to derail everything that the next government, whoever wins the election, might want to do.
Speaking for an hour without notes is very difficult and it can appear to be a very impressive trick - but at the end of the day, that's all it is: a parlour trick.
If you can't speak for an hour with no or minimal notes without forgetting to mention essential issues, you would be far better advised to stick to the autocue.
Comments
well, sure you can, you put it on the credit card. I once knew a lot of 18 - 20 year olds who found this out. Then they got the first credit card bill. Then it sort of dawned, oh yeah, you can spend it, but then you have to pay it back, and pay interest on it.
Thing is though, they were spending on them selves and learned the hard way, yes you can do it, but you cant do it for long.
Now spending it on what you think is right for part of the public, and then demanding under threat another part of the public pay the bill, without ever asking for authorisation from the public in the first place, so you spend it as you see fit, others pay for it, you cant be held to account. thats whats wrong,
that is the problem. I have no problem if someone gets themselves into debt, sure they have to face the consequences, but when someone else does it for them, on their behalf, well thats WRONG.
that is why we need Harrogate, most of all demand 5
No taxation or spending without consent
No tax, charge or levy shall be imposed, nor any public spending authorised, nor any sum borrowed by any national or local government except with the express approval the majority of the people, renewed annually on presentation of a budget which shall first have been approved by their respective legislatures
Should really be ammended to "YOU CAN SPEND SOME OF TOMORROWS MONEY TODAY, THOUGH YOU CANT DO IT FOR LONG, AND YOU WILL HAVE LESS TOMORROW, AND ON THE WHOLE YOU WILL PAY MORE FOR IT IF YOU DO"