False Impressions From Impact

As you probably know Impact is the alternative, and SU backed newspaper, to the Tab, which I write for. The recent Impact news piece I saw on 'Government Austerity Cuts Challenged By Nottingham City Council' was I thought substandard and obviously biased so I thought it was best to counter it.

So what is impact arguing in it's news piece? Essentially the news article was reporting on how massive the cuts are for Nottingham City and how they're effecting front line services and leading to more than 750 job losses. This was done by presenting one fact on government cuts and by quoting the council leader of Nottingham City Council and Labour activists Impact. As an example of the argument the leader of Nottingham Council said to provide funding was essential for “those valuable services, but also stimulate our local economy, support businesses, create jobs and improve education, skills and training opportunities.”

Rumour has it Nottingham City Council wanted to sue me for using their logo, just to be safe I use this image now.

Firstly I doubt that the mix of only Labour voices on the idea of government cuts is a good idea for a news piece. It is especially important to note that Nottingham City Labour Council is one of the most Left wing in the country. Do you remember the fact that they refused, until they were forced to last year, to sign up to the government legislation declaring all council spending above £500 for transparency. Transparency and value for money was described as 'vexatious' by Nottingham City Council.

Do you also remember these posters around Nottingham last year (see below). Yes posters that seek to try and divide the well dressed people of Windsor to the plain clothed people of Nottingham. There is a reason why Nottingham is receiving more cuts per person than Windsor and that is because under the last government they unfairly had one of the highest budgets per person of any council in the UK. These posters were called in the Guardian "lazy, socialist propaganda".

But also on the point on money saving and cuts why is the City Council wasting money on getting people to complain about government cuts.  The cost of these posters were over £3,000 (not including the website to complain to); surely this money should by spent on you know looking after Nottingham people and protecting them from 'evil Tory' cuts. And this is not a one off poster either because campaigns like this have occurred since 2010 on cuts in general, welfare changes and the removal of the spare bedroom subsidy (which the City Council call 'the bedroom tax' despite it not being a tax).

More wasteful cuts posters.

There is of course more waste that could be exposed about Nottingham City Council. I haven't mentioned the workplace parking levy which drives business (and rates money) from the city centre and loses money overall. I haven't mentioned the trams that lose millions of pounds a year. I haven't mentioned that Nottingham councillors get paid almost £11,500 in allowances when back in Cambridgeshire, where I am from, County Councillors only get £3,000. Everything Nottingham City Council seem to do is very wasteful. Perhaps they should start looking at these things before complaining they need to make cuts to front line services and the elderly. I think they would find a lot of money to pay for the front line if they made savings.

The Nottingham Tram has always lost millions of pounds and has falling passenger numbers. Should the money be spent elsewhere?

And this wastefulness is seen in the back office most of all. On the same day the council announced to axe school buses costing £1.69 million they planned to raise salaries of office staff (mostly at the upper middle to high level) by £1.36 million.

Also despite people more than 750 people probably being layed off next year Nottingham City Council seems to be on a recruitment offensive. The ruling Labour Party have said in recent election literature that 'Nottingham Labour helped 1500 people into jobs last year, created 400 Nottingham jobs funded placements and filled 500 apprenticeships'. This seems like the council actually being rather disingenuous as its actually employing more people than its getting rid of. Also with these 750 lost jobs, surely, if the people are still needed, stopping a wage increase would be better than making people redundant. Making people redundant when you're increasing wages for others in a council is wrong.

The ruling Labour Party are claiming to create jobs and not to be cutting them.

So there you are not a council stretched to the limit and unable to do basic things but a wasteful council that cuts the front line and is employing more people than ever. The facts are a bit different from the Impact story. The only way that the Impact story would make any sense is if you believed no cuts should ever take place. A position that is laughable to the public with all the economic problems we have. I do suggest Impact add more facts especially from the alternate side to their articles. You can take some from here if you like as an act of goodwill.

Update

Some basic errors have been made by Impact and they actually meant Nottinghamshire County Council rather than Nottingham City Council in their news piece. #Doh.

What a terrible error that has led to much confusion. Still at least it is sorted now, although I think views from the Opposition of Notts County Council would have made for a better news piece.

All my points still stand about how awful Nottingham City Council is. A wasteful and terribly bureaucratic monster which is cutting front line services but boosting the back office. As I say about the County Council I am not in the know enough to write a piece on them without massive research; but from what I have heard and the small amount of facts I do know Nottinghamshire Labour and Nottingham Labour are cut from similar cloth.

Growing Optimism

Optimism in the UK is up whether you're in business or in the Conservative Party. The IMF and recent consumer confidence data is starting to show the start of an economic recovery. Because of this, Labour's woes and the Referendum Bill the Conservatives are also feeling a boost. But should both Tories and the general public feel good about the future?

First to the economy and yes things may be about to start to pick up. Business and Consumer Confidence is at an 8 year high and the IMF has said that 0.9% of growth is coming our way this year which is much better than last year's 0.2%. And this year there has been a bit of help from the government with the 1% decrease in corporation tax and a freeze in capital gains tax. But more importantly in boosting confidence there has been some pretty targeted cuts, where alcohol and petrol is now a lot cheaper than it would have been under Labour.

We are back at pre recession levels with consumer confidence but still a while to go before we reach the point the crash actually happened.

The bad news on the economy front is that the confidence from people isn't based on something totally solid. There hasn't been as many tax cuts by the Government as I have would have liked to see. This isn't the case with the Coalition Government which seem to be relying on positive words and a feel good factor, explaining the for the longevity not of recession of going nowhere and then a sudden pick up. The repetition of 'Aspiration Nation' is not necessarily a bad per se but if things go badly or not as good as the small amount of confidence predicts then the economy will be flat again. But then again most economies have a problem like this.

Overall however the economy has made the Conservatives moderately happy and rightly so because it is because of them putting pressure on George Osborne to add these specific tax cuts that we are seeing some sort of change in the economy. The Conservative Party has been on a roll recently to dictating the amount of spending that will happen in the next parliament to pushing the issue of a referendum on Europe.

What does the opposition think at the moment? Well nothing useful as Labour says it wants to match spend the same but wants to borrow more and will not back the basic principles democracy. What's even worse for Labour is they screwing up massively in Falkirk and day by every single constituency in the UK seems to have Labour candidates selected by Unite in a way that is bordering/maybe illegal. The Conservatives are united and aiding a recovery whilst Labour is anything but. No wonder the poll ratings show a decrease in support for Labour.

The Conservatives are really uniting around the EU Referendum Bill.

So all in all good times. But hold on, the Tories should be weary just like the public. The economy is yet to be confirmed to be definitely on the up, the 1st quarter of this year saw only 0.3% of economic growth. Divisions on Europe are unlikely to come back with the Referendum Bill but if it fails tensions may creep up again. Also what if Ed Miliband suddenly supports it? Falkirk could go two ways now. Ed could look strong and shun the Unions to help Labour or look weak and want their money, although either way it is not good for him really.

Labour is still more popular than its leader will ever be.

In general things are looking better though. Red Ed is too dithering to decide whether he should have jam or butter on his toast and things getting worse for the Government seems a distant prospect now. The only major worry is not to make everyone too over confident. The austerity isn't over yet.

One thing we can rely on is the Red Ed will still be weak.

Spend, Spend, Spend

Today was, as you should know, the spending review for 2015/2016. Theoretically this doesn't really need to happen mostly because it is timetabling cuts during the next Parliament, but this is a very politically savy move by the Chancellor to show a plan of action to the Great British public and put Labour on the spot. 59% of the public believe cuts are necessary (up 3 % since the Coalition came to power) but more importantly only 27% of the public think austerity is wrong (down 7% since the Coalition came in). This puts Labour in a tight spot because they can longer credibly say to the public that they will increase spending. The thing the Government is bending the truth a bit on making cuts.

Osborne is being shown up by the Labour Party of the past. I would point out though that the Labour Party at this moment would come no where near to what Healey cut in his time. 

In real terms government expenditure, despite the cuts, is projected to be slightly higher in 2015 than it was in 2011. The broad cut message apart from in 2010 is that in real terms we have stayed very much the same and even went up slightly this year compared to last. But how can this be? It is true that we are cutting lots off government departments, some like Communities and Local Government is going to have over 1/3rd taken off their budget.

We are making real cuts to budgets but overall government spending is going up this year.

So what has gone wrong? Well put simply we haven't seen the growth expected by George Osborne in 2010 and thus tax revenues have been down. Thus to keep our economy going Jeffrey Gideon the Chancellor has decided we need to stimulate the economy to make sure we don't lose the tiny percentage of growth we have at the moment. Because our economy, like somebody dependant on drugs, is so addicted to state spending if we were to start to fix it there would be serious downers experienced, which are politically unpalatable according to the Chancellor.

However the growth problem and lack of revenue can be fixed by lowering tax. At a lower level more people are willing to pay and the economy grows creating even more revenue. In the medium term this will get things going again although we would have to cut a lot more at this moment. Overall however, when comparing it over the 20 or more years it will take if noting changes, we wouldn't have to cut so much because debts and deficits are being paid off more by tax income and less by cuts. Short sharp shock treatment that produces confidence by giving people more money in their pocket.

When we cut the 50p tax rate to 45p the government brought in much more revenue than we did when it was higher. 

The thing is, the public actually think we are cutting way more than is actually going on. 39% of people, a lot higher if we discount the 18% who have no idea about this in the polling data, think we are cutting too far and too fast implying that the Government is cutting spending by several percentage points each year at least. Essentially we are taking a big political hit for no real gain. The debt, which is actually the main issue is increasing too much, there is too little growth and government is still the biggest part of the economy. The deficit is borrowing for borrowings sake an important but nonetheless a side symptom of our problem. What the Government has done so far is good, but it could do better.

There is however one piece of good news. The last budget had some very tactical tax cuts. There is a new feeling of slight optimism. It will not be as great as giving people more money to spend but somehow words such as aspiration and growth mentioned very often have inspired enough confidence to possibly start some sort of private sector led growth in the country. 

The words 'aspiration nation' may just save the UK economy.

'At Risk Of Failure'

Yesterday the government released at 5 to 5pm a document that proclaimed that virtually everything they are doing infrastructure and project wise is likely or going to fail. This is quite a worrying development considering what could happen.

The first problem with the all these projects failing is the cost. The governments flagship infrastructure project of HS2 is going way over budget (see http://thingselliottsays.blogspot.co.uk/2013/03/tony-robinson-stops-hs2.html and http://thingselliottsays.blogspot.co.uk/2013/02/weekly-poll-lowdown_16.html to view what I think about HS2). The government initially said that it would cost £17 billion, however this has not been accepted by the Public Accounts Committee and the Tax Payers Alliance has predicted HS2 to cost £45.5 billion. Matthew Sinclair, who is the Tax Payers Alliance CEO, says that "alarm bells will yet again be ringing for taxpayers". It has certainly got me concerned even more so when it is calculated that HS2 will be loss making for the economy. All that money wasted.

My thoughts exactly.

More worrying for me however is our national defence which is seemingly in jeopardy once again. The aircraft carriers that the government have promised to be built have been listed as red or 'unachievable' by this report. The decision to make sure we had no carrier defence was stupid in my opinion. We are too big a world power not to have one, we have to borrow the Charles De Gaulle if in need. But now it looks like we will never have one. Great. Worrying for me too is the fact that this project is going to cost about £7 billion; yet HS2 is costing over 5 times that amount. So effectively we have decided to trade national defence for the biggest waste of money ever. Very wise.  

HMS Argus was the world first aircraft carrier built in 1918. Less than 100 years later when still very much needed the carrier looks like its going to be extinct in the UK.

Everything is going under from the new passport control system to the universal credit benefit system. We are creaking as a nation at very best when it comes to government projects. So whose fault is this? Well partially it is the Governments, they have made some of the stupid decisions that could have probably been foreseen. But mostly it is ever inefficient and massively over paid Whitehall system. It is a lace where no one does any work, everyone receives a massive pension, no one does what minsters say and is secretly receiving a more than 3% increase in wages from George Osborne to keep them quiet. These great people are slowly destroying our country and yet we can do very little to stop it.

Whitehall is like entering into a world where money is plentiful and inefficiency is the order of the day.

So what is the case for the defence. Well Francis Maude has said that they have made £1.7 billion in efficiency savings so that the projects are not so costly. However, he must have forgotten all together governmental infrastructure cost £350 billion. That's just over a 0.4% saving which is truly pathetic. So it seems like all these projects Britain is 'at risk of failure' because of the incompetent people who we cannot get rid of at the helm. This time it's the civil service and not Lib Dem ministers. 

It's not all the fault of the Government. Even Dave isn't happy that Francis Maude isn't delivering on the civil service.

Waste and Cuts

Today the figures for the cost of PM Direct, where Dave speaks to members of the public, was announced at £50,000. This does seem a tad too much for a glorified Town Hall meeting but I think we need should have a scale of the amount of cuts that are needed and pick the fights on what really needs to go.

Dave Direct.

The budget deficit stands this year at £108 billion and the national debt is £1.18 trillion. So let's cut PM Direct and have no public questions at all. That would save us the £50,000 and bring our deficit down to £107,999,950,000. This is obviously a truly massive saving.

It's clear we've got to do better than that. PM direct is similar to that of local government, listening to people directly and so on. So let's abolish it we'd save £27.1 billion. that's a fair size of money but barely a quarter of the budget deficit.

Let's try and get rid of that deficit. I'd then abolish the Northern Irish, Scottish and Welsh assemblies. They are a bit like local government and together make a saving of £48.2 billion. The deficit would stand at £32.7 billion.

Councils also are closely affiliated with the police. So let's get rid of them and any justice system we have in this country. We'd then save £31 billion. Almost got rid of the budget deficit then.

So let's cut international aid, that's £12.7 billion, most Tories want this to have a cut if not to go completely. That will get rid of our deficit. Hurrah, although I wouldn't in a real life scenario want an end to government departments, I would like the government to make net cuts.

But let's see how far we get the debt down by cutting. Dave said that he wanted some of the international aid budget to be spent on military expenditure so let's get rid of all forms of the MOD and military expenditure. A whopping £40 billion will be saved. But that doesn't make much of a difference to the debt either. Let's get rid of education too, that's almost £100 billion. The state at this point is now just a glorified wheelchair.

Our national debt will then stand at £1,040,000,000,000. Still loads. So let's get right to the bone. What about cutting all welfare and the NHS, tough times and all that. This comes to the massive total of  £357 billion. £683 billion pounds is left.

The State has very little to do now, so what's the point of it. Let's abolish it completely. If we can get round the logistical problem of privatising tax collectors and the like. We can save a total of £720 billion. There is now no spending, only income to pay the debt.

If we did that we'd still have to pay £468 billion. That's how big our problem is. If we abolished all spending for 1 year we'd still not pay off our debt.

If we abolish the state we would still be left with a huge amount of debt.

Obviously I'm not here to tell you we should abolish the state. That's just silly. But we need to be looking around for big areas where we can cut. £50,000 is nothing. I am a great believer in look after the pennies and the pounds will look after themselves. But clearly this will not work in the mess we are in. We need to really get a hold of the economic problems. 

Parallel Universe

Sometimes I think some of the people who run the country don’t really know what is going on.

Today the PCS union voted for strike action by 61% with only 28% of the 250,000 members voted in the ballot. The Union now wants a 5% pay rise or £1,200 per member. Clearly the PCS are on the pulse of tough times and tighter budgets. Everyone is being squeezed and now they are demanding a massively above inflation pay rise.

Well pay rises are based on performance, if you improve productivity by quantity or quality you would reasonably except some sort of perk. So let’s examine how well the Civil Service has been doing. They've put a roadblock to every single education reform that they are obliged to implement. They've cut front line services and yet have kept, if not increased in some cases, their pensions. They are in active opposition to the government they are contractually obliged to serve. Also they aren't doing a great deal to help get the economy moving with all the extra red tape they add. There seems to be no real change in making the civil service better than it was before the coalition came into power.

So, although I appreciate everyone wants more money, they are demanding more when others are getting a cut. They’re lucky that they have a freeze (except for those working under £21,000) most people have their incomes slashed. Yes they are feeling the pinch, it’s called austerity. It’s necessary to save the country.

Also, if you’re a civil servant and you've chosen to strike because you want to stop government policy find another job. You are contractually obliged to implement government decisions. Fine give advice and have your own personal opinions but the minister/councillors run the show.

Its beggar’s belief that some civil servants can still think about a pre-recession world. No wonder they are out of touch, they are no way accountable to anyone.