George Bridges: We must refight the battles of the 1970s
[George Bridges has written articles published in The Daily Telegraph.]
Boxing Day is for eating leftovers. Today, Britain tucks into cold turkey. And we'd better get used to a spot of austerity. We are facing a crisis as bad, if not worse, than that of the 1970s. The lights might not be going out and our dead are being buried, but don't be fooled. Our economy and most public institutions are, in Whitehall-speak, not fit for purpose. Unless Britain has a radical change of direction, prepare yourself for an era of decline.
For evidence, I present Exhibit A – the state. The public sector is sucking the private sector dry. It presents a structural problem just as corrosive as trade union domination or nationalised industries in the 1970s. Two facts: the public sector is roughly the same size as Scotland's population; and taxpayers will have to fill a £1 trillion black hole in public sector pensions – while private sector pensions have been trashed.
Exhibit B: our dependency culture, another aspect of the client state – 3·5 million working-age people (three times Birmingham's population) are on out-of-work benefits that place little or no work expectations on them, even though many could do some work. Labour calls this "social justice". Enough said.
Exhibit C: the conquest of cultural and social organisations by "progressives" – those who subvert our institutions to instill a socialist, "all must have prizes", centralised ethos. In our schools, the concept that education should focus on the transmission of a body of knowledge; the belief that children learn through structured teaching, not play; the concept that a good exam is not one that everyone passes – all these ideas have been junked.
You may know this already. You might also have also thrown your radio across the room while listening to another "quangocrat" on the Today programme whingeing on about the need for "more resources". But consider Exhibit D.
This is the battle cry of the Left. Across Europe, socialists claim that the economic crisis was caused by free markets – and we need more socialism, not less, to dig us out of the hole. Listen to the new leader of France's opposition Socialist Party: "Liberal global governance and financial liberalism have suffered a social, moral and economic failure." This was echoed by Sweden's Social Democrat leader: "Conservatives have perhaps suffered a policy for sunny days, but now it is rainy and cold. This crisis is an opportunity for social democrats." Back home, there is the leader of the civil servants' PCS union: "The arguments for more free markets, less regulation and more privatisation have now been found wanting and hollow."
As to their solution, socialists are calling for – in the words of the European Trade Union Confederation – "a complete change in the way the financial world works". More public spending, more regulation and more workers' rights: "Strong collective bargaining practice, independent of and not subordinated to law courts and judges."
Has this spirited you back to the 1970s? If not, try this from another Labour paymaster, Derek Simpson, joint general secretary of Unite. Welcoming the Government's spending bonanza that will push us into a black hole of debt, he said: "This is a welcome warm up exercise after 30 years of inaction and neo-liberal economics." If this is the warm-up act, heaven help us when the star turn gets going...
Read entire article at Telegraph (UK)
Boxing Day is for eating leftovers. Today, Britain tucks into cold turkey. And we'd better get used to a spot of austerity. We are facing a crisis as bad, if not worse, than that of the 1970s. The lights might not be going out and our dead are being buried, but don't be fooled. Our economy and most public institutions are, in Whitehall-speak, not fit for purpose. Unless Britain has a radical change of direction, prepare yourself for an era of decline.
For evidence, I present Exhibit A – the state. The public sector is sucking the private sector dry. It presents a structural problem just as corrosive as trade union domination or nationalised industries in the 1970s. Two facts: the public sector is roughly the same size as Scotland's population; and taxpayers will have to fill a £1 trillion black hole in public sector pensions – while private sector pensions have been trashed.
Exhibit B: our dependency culture, another aspect of the client state – 3·5 million working-age people (three times Birmingham's population) are on out-of-work benefits that place little or no work expectations on them, even though many could do some work. Labour calls this "social justice". Enough said.
Exhibit C: the conquest of cultural and social organisations by "progressives" – those who subvert our institutions to instill a socialist, "all must have prizes", centralised ethos. In our schools, the concept that education should focus on the transmission of a body of knowledge; the belief that children learn through structured teaching, not play; the concept that a good exam is not one that everyone passes – all these ideas have been junked.
You may know this already. You might also have also thrown your radio across the room while listening to another "quangocrat" on the Today programme whingeing on about the need for "more resources". But consider Exhibit D.
This is the battle cry of the Left. Across Europe, socialists claim that the economic crisis was caused by free markets – and we need more socialism, not less, to dig us out of the hole. Listen to the new leader of France's opposition Socialist Party: "Liberal global governance and financial liberalism have suffered a social, moral and economic failure." This was echoed by Sweden's Social Democrat leader: "Conservatives have perhaps suffered a policy for sunny days, but now it is rainy and cold. This crisis is an opportunity for social democrats." Back home, there is the leader of the civil servants' PCS union: "The arguments for more free markets, less regulation and more privatisation have now been found wanting and hollow."
As to their solution, socialists are calling for – in the words of the European Trade Union Confederation – "a complete change in the way the financial world works". More public spending, more regulation and more workers' rights: "Strong collective bargaining practice, independent of and not subordinated to law courts and judges."
Has this spirited you back to the 1970s? If not, try this from another Labour paymaster, Derek Simpson, joint general secretary of Unite. Welcoming the Government's spending bonanza that will push us into a black hole of debt, he said: "This is a welcome warm up exercise after 30 years of inaction and neo-liberal economics." If this is the warm-up act, heaven help us when the star turn gets going...