Britain’s Chancellor of the Exchequer, Alistair Darling, delivered his Budget speech a couple of hours ago, but before I have a quick look at it, I’d better mention Gordon Brown’s announcement yesterday concerning the ongoing row about MPs’ allowances and expenses. A formal statement by Commons’ Leader Harriet Harman revealed MPs may vote within a week on the package. It would scrap the discredited annual £24,000 London housing allowance for MPs’ whose main homes are in their constituencies, including the much-criticised “John Lewis list” of items ranging from fitted kitchens to plasma television screens to bath plugs for which they can claim. Mr Brown plans to sweep away the present system by July 1 and replace it temporarily with one under which MPs would receive a daily allowance based on attendance at Westminster. This might save a few pounds, but it sounds even sillier than the present arrangement. It’s rather similar to me, as a bricklayer, being told by my boss that I was assured of my wage at the end of the week, but that I would be paid expenses if I actually turned up on the building site, and shouted “’Ear, ’Ear” every time anyone else laid a brick or a block. No wonder Britain’s in a mess.
As I mentioned, the so called Budget was delivered earlier this afternoon – I’m not really sure if we can rightly call it a Budget, as there’s nothing in the coffers to budget with. Our fellow in charge at the Treasury, Mr Darling, seems very economical with the truth. During his difficult speech, he mentioned that even now, most people manage to find work within a couple of weeks. Does he honestly think that even the most fervent Labour supporter is going to believe such utter rubbish? A few months ago, he had announced that Britain’s economy would shrink by 1% -- today, his forecast was 3.5%. The Brahan Seer, Coinneach Odhar in Gaelic, was well known in the 17th century for his prophecies, especially concerning the Highlands and Islands of Scotland. He was reputed to have been born in the Uig district of Lewis, where Alistair Darling now owns land and property, but obviously the gift of accurate foretelling has not rubbed off on him.
Of course, all Labour Governments have been known to run out of money, leaving the Tories to pick up the pieces, but I doubt if any of them have got Britain into the situation that it now finds itself in, as the country has double the debt that it had when Labour came to power. It doesn’t stop there, either, as the Chancellor announced that he would be borrowing a further £348 billion over the next 2 years. We cannot even begin to imagine those figures, as we search for the cheapest tin of baked beans on the supermarket shelves.
The car scrapping scheme, which he also announced this afternoon, is likely to raise, rather than reduce emissions. The carbon costs of manufacturing new cars – and the materials required to produce them – appear to outweigh the savings from driving more efficient models. There is no way, either, of ensuring that folk will buy an economical model of car – they can go to the garage and buy a Mercedes instead of their 2-door Vauxhall Corsa, for example. This scheme is obviously not about the environment or jobs. It's simply another installment in the history of government subsidies for the motor industry. But in this case it's mostly the car industry in other countries that we'll be supporting, as 85% of our new cars come from abroad. This, to me, is absolutely stupid. The building and civil engineering sectors are those which have lost the biggest percentage of jobs during this recession, but nothing is done to help them. Investment in the construction industry would get hundreds of thousands back into work, because of the extra jobs generated in manufacturing and haulage businesses etc.
I have to stop here, as I need a calming smoke, and Mr Darling will be charging me more for a packet in an hour’s time.
No comments:
Post a Comment