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Although I do like the Independent newspaper, by and large, they do have a tendency to write hair brained Editorials from time to time, a bit like they have some ‘Nutter’ locked in a broom cupboard who they let out once in a while while the rest of them go down the Pub, it is really quite odd.

I suppose it could be someone who forgets to take their medication from time to time but never-the-less, today they managed another one. This time it was to attack Cameron over the “Broken Society” theme: http://www.independent.co.uk/opinion/leading-articles/leading-article-david-camerons-cynical-moral-panic-1956107.html

Worth a Comment

I see today’s editorial has been written by someone on “Work Experience” again. “David Cameron’s cynical moral panic” What on earth does that mean ? I’m not quite sure how someone who is cynical can have ‘morals’ in the first place, a bit like “The Virgin Hooker” – verging on the ridiculous. Make your mind up, okay you don’t like ‘Dave’ but is he cynical or does he have morals ?

A more intelligent approach would have been to concentrate on the ramblings of “The Institute for Fiscal Studies” which just said what everybody with a grain of common sense knows: None of the Parties are “telling it like it is”, we hardly need a Think Tank to tell us that. The real issue is just why the electorate are trying to hide under their duvets ? We know they don’t want the “Truth” because the moment the Tories tried that approach, their lead in the Polls collapsed, something the other two Parties quickly incorporated in their campaigns – “Don’t talk about the Elephant in the room.”

The Problem

We know that roughly 70bn has got to be taken out of the economy pretty much right away because it is that figure, not the cost of the “Banking Crisis” which is the problem because it is the “Structural Deficit” caused by Brown spending that amount of money more each year than the Treasury receives in Taxes even in ‘good years’. The public need to get a grip on this figure and relate it to something tangible so that they can understand what it means.

If we say that it is roughly twice the Defence Budget each year, what does that relate to in terms of jobs ? If we take our Armed Forces say 250,000, Defence Industries, Civilian support jobs, money spent in local communities in the shops and so on, 1-1,500,000 jobs ? NB, No I don’t know the exact figures, this is for demonstration purposes only.

So what we are talking about is losing roughly 2-3 million jobs from the UK economy to add to the 8 million that we already know as “Economically Inactive”. In a way from a politician’s perspective, this is so bad, Brown is right, perhaps it will be better to do it a lot more slowly whilst hoping “new jobs” will happen… This really is a huge problem both economically and socially because whole swathes of “Government Services” will have to disappear. Unfortunately of course and with the Eurozone getting a big hit overnight, not all of this is in our hands, the Markets from whom we will have to borrow from, also have a say through the value of Sterling and the interest we pay on our borrowings.

Conscription

Cameron is right in the sense that “Voluntary Organisations” will have to take up the slack in services but personally, I don’t think that will be the answer, given the levels of youth unemployment, we may need to bring in a new form of National-Community Service that combines plugging the gaps in the system with the ‘conscripts’ getting paid very little but also getting serious job-skills training and on-going education on a personally tailored basis.

Major Infrastructure projects might have to be undertaken using this source of ‘cheap labour’ with the commercial companies such as Civil Engineers, Architects and so on, reduced to project planning and management only. In order to bring such a radical shift about, we will need a major change in public attitudes to pretty much everything, the first thing to go will be the “Me, me, me Society” and the strange attitude that has grown up of people having “Rights but no equivalent Responsibilities”.

Post Recession

Whilst this ‘vision’ may seem extreme to some people, it certainly isn’t attractive I agree, the idea that strikes me is that I am not convinced that once the World has come out of recession, things will be as before. Places like India and China have sufficient ‘headroom’ to continue expanding the manufacture -sales of cars and other consumer goods, the Western economies are rather saturated with these things.

In fact we could most likely do far better with moving to “smaller scale manufacturing” and a repair rather than replacement society. In fact this would tie up better with creating a “greener society” where materials are recycled and we stop raping the Planet and our environment.

You may question Cameron’s “Broken Society” as a concept but the underlying theme is that we in ‘Society’ need to undergo radical change in our approach towards each other, how we solve problems and how we prioritize ‘desirable outcomes’ without the assumption of throwing taxpayers money at them. Now send the brat who wrote this editorial home and don’t let them back in the building ever again, Tarquin is a fatuous fart as likely, is his Father who ‘got him the gig’ in the first place !