Godfrey Bloom
Economy students are taught at universities around the world that somehow countries are exempt from the basic rules that our families or small businesses have to abide. This is why as a manager and director of various companies over the years I have not nor would I ever employ an economics graduate from a state university.
This administration is in a mess because it cannot reduce public spending; they think if they talk about it long enough it will magically happen. A bit like my wife and the diet plan. I suspect we have a new generation of politician who hail from many generations never called upon to save money, they are too young, too wealthy. Moreover they have no regard for the sanctity of public money, the serious responsibility that spending it should carry. Every day we see examples of criminal waste which go, apart from the occasional tabloid headline, unremarked by the chattering classes. Bear with me if you will for some pretty trivial domestic accounting but the principal follows right up the chain, or it should.
This year I retired, in spite of careful and diligent attention to my pension and a lifetime in full employment I must now manage on half my former salary. Unlike government I cannot print money, nor can I borrow it. I have no alternative but to radically cut spending. With the exception of our stables we have no major expense, so the savings will have to come from many small cuts across the board. It is amazing how much one can save with this approach.
In no order of priority, because we tackled stuff as it came, we managed to reach our goal and without too much pain.
We had too many cars. One for the memsahib, one for me and an expensive toy. Quite an expense, the motorist is the number one cash cow for the government: well, they have chauffeur driven cars at our expense so why would they care? Got rid of the expensive toy, replaced it with another less expensive toy and sold the spare workhorse car.
Next, the insurance bill. Last valuation of antique furniture and pictures was ten years ago. Valuations have halved, I told the insurance company. We also told them we don’t need ‘any driver’ cover and only now do 5000 miles per year so requote please. By the by, if the house burns down we will not rebuild it in marble and gold for which it seemed insured.
Banking next, Coutts Bank for over 30 years, worth it for me in the past, they still employ real people in this country and nothing is too much trouble. But the fees are now wicked and I cannot justify them, so down to the local bank in the market square.
We have never been ones for a hot house, but a thermostat and timer switch adjustment here and there and almost complete use of my bicycle in the summer have trimmed the energy budget.
Charity as they say begins at home. I did not realise how much went in that direction, difficult for me because my support was local and they will miss me unlike the fat cats at the big charities who cream it in executive salaries.
As a baby boomer, no money was wasted on food, I still remember ration books, but with a good local butcher a home made burger is pretty much as welcome as a steak and we grow our own veg. Eating out is no longer done in a casual way, once a fortnight is plenty. Rail travel is second class pre-booked, tubes not cabs in The Smoke. Young members of the family in work now are allowed to stand their corner in the pub.
I have been ruthless in debt collection at the behest of Mrs B, no longer Mr Nice Guy, if you owe me loot my lawyer is coming for it, no more sob stories.
Holidays are no longer posh hotels but good pubs or modest cottages who are dog friendly, Lakes and Dales favoured. I have re-learned how to clean a car properly, do exercise unsupervised, weed my own flower beds etc.
Our windows were getting a bit dodgy, the replacement estimate was horrendous (VAT was the deal breaker) we settled yet again for painting.
Two of my London clubs had to go, kept one. We all have our own systems for balancing our budgets anyone who has retired or had to take a salary dive will have already done all this.
The government has made almost no serious effort. See if you can marry up my savings as a template for government, here is a start. Should we be giving away nearly 50 percent of GDP growth in foreign aid (charity), £40 billion on HSR (travel), aircraft carriers flying F35 Bs (toys), paying for healthy youngsters to watch daytime TV (welfare), £40 billion in quangoes (car cleaners, gardeners, personal trainers), clubs (EU membership), not to mention energy subsidies. Imagine me going to the bank and trying to explain to the manager that, in spite of my huge debts I still had to continue to spend more than my income, not just this year but for the foreseeable future. That my ‘borrowing requirement ‘was somehow sacrosanct. For you and I it would resemble a Monty Python comedy sketch, yet governments do it all the time.
You get the drift? Not easy but essential, sooner or later a British Government, indeed all the other western governments are going to have to face up to the challenge, the status quo is not an option.
Let me suggest a good start would be to cap civil servant salaries at £100,000 per year.
As Churchill used to say ‘action this day’.
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Governments talk about “cuts”. The LabLibNazistalk avout fascist Tory Cuts To Services”, and it’s true services have been cut. However, what’s not been cut is (a) the number of bureaucrats, and (b) their perks priveleges and salaries.
One doesn’t see any fewer armour-plated black Audi and Jag limos ridden in by a “Council’s Cabinet Members” or “Hospital Trust Managers”, now, does one.
We could also do with firing almost all of MoD’s procurement department, and hiring the following:
A General
A Colonel
A 2nd- Lieutenant
An NCO
A Group Captain
A Squadron Leader
An Aircraft Fitter
A Rear-Admiral
A serving Captain
A CPO
An Able Seaman
instead.
It’ll never catch on. Too much common sense. The BBC (beloved by many) and the rest of the dreadful enemedia; along with almost the entire political establishment coupled with too much of the legal profession, hate people like you. Take your common sense some place tight and stuff it.
They quickly recognise that no personal glory nor monetary profit is to be gained from people like you. Will never change your mind will they? No chance of landing another compliant voter.
But why am I telling you something you already know? Allow me though to perhaps suggest a better start: Cap civil servant’s pay at £70,000 with no special pension deals and now that the true Prophet has been proven right – rivulets beyond any doubt – stop insulting him because a lot of other people are also now becoming offended.
On a personal note Mr Bloom. Painting dodgy windows is a waste of time. Why not buy brand new good quality windows (directly from a German manufacturer) and fit them yourself? After the first half dozen you’ll be amazed how quickly you can bung’em in. All they have to be is wind and water tight. Common sense really!
Might I end by wishing a Happy New Year to all at the LA.
Actually David the military is one of the few things the present government HAS cut. The share the military take of the economy is about 2% – anyone who thinks there is real room for cuts in the defence budget should think again.
Mr Bloom is correct – the distinction between what establishment economists call “micro economics” and “macro economics” is false (phony).
What does not make sense for a household or a business does not make sense for a government either – there are no special “Keynesian” rules that apply to governments. Print-and-spend (“boasting effective demand”) is NOT a good idea. “Monetary stimulus” (credit bubble finance) and “fiscal stimulus” (budget deficits) are bad ideas.
Indeed Lord Keynes would never have got away with it had he simply said, like the “Monetary Cranks”, that governments should just print money and hand it out – only by saying that governments should expand the money supply via the BANKING SYSTEM did Lord Keynes get powerful interests on his side.
Although no matter how much “narrow money” the bankers are given it does not come close to covering the “broad money” credit bubble the banking system has created.
As for what government spending should be cut………
Some cuts are obvious.
We should get out of the E.U. and U.N. and IMF (and so on) – no more money for any of these organisations.
No more “overseas aid” – Lord Peter Bauer utterly refuted the case for “aid”.
No more funding for the domestic “equality industry” – for the people who, in fact, go about stirring up racial hatred, and hatred between men and women, and so on (creating complaints – so they can justify their own existence).
No more Department of “Culture, Media and Sport” (and please no more BBC – or “independent” media bodies attacking commercial television and radio) – government never used to spend money on these things, Keynes suggested it and Keynes was wrong.
No more Corporate Welfare – no more department of trade and industry, or “regional aid” or “enterprise partnerships”.
A real “bonfire of the quangos” – not a pretend one.
YOU ARE ONLY SCRATCHING THE SURFACE PAUL.
I know, I know – but it is a start.
There is no better spokesman for the return of common sense in government than Godfrey Bloom! Of course, the reason that governments do not have to balance their books is that they are legal counterfeiters of money and, despite their protests of altruism, government itself is the biggest beneficiary of this counterfeiting. Return to sound money and governments would be exposed to the same budget realities as Mr. Bloom in retirement. (Not to sound my own horn…well, OK, I am sounding my own horn), I made a similar argument in this essay:
http://mises.org/library/simplicity-sound-money
“Kept the stables and replaced the expensive toy with a less expensive toy”. You poor dear, austerity is really biting. Not being Farage’s drinking buddy anymore must be saving you a few bob too!
The interesting point you make is comparing household expenditure with government expenditure. There are a host of MMT economists out there who maintain the two are worlds apart and “tut tut” when people view them as comparable. They will blind you with stats and bollocks about velocity of money and the need for government stimulus and how money doesn’t exist unless government creates it and how somebody’s debt is somebody else’s credit.
I’m with you on this one, but I’m not very bright and somebody needs to either debunk this MMT stuff or accept there’s something in it. Looking at the state of our public finances, you almost hope it’s true.
Regarding new windows, John is probably right, but if you fit them yourself, you won’t get a FENSA certificate which will cause problems if you decide to sell the property. Never mind that you will fit them better than the cowboys who want to do them in double quick time and get the money. Got to tick the boxes, see.
You don’t need to “accept” anything until researching it. Until then, just say you’re on the fence about it. Certainly no need to accept their proclamations about anything on face value.
I once wrote a letter to Godfrey Bloom to tell him how much I agreed with him about some comment or other he made about someone that he was pilloried for. I regret that now, Godfrey Bloom is clearly a prick of the first order.
“Godfrey Bloom is clearly a prick of the first order”
Just out of interest, what exactly made it clear to you?
It ought to be clear to everyone. Poor chap thinks being down to three cars, ‘the stables’ and eating out only once a fortnight is ‘radically cutting spending’. He also clearly thinks working in the city and in politics fits him to lecture everyone else on hardship and thrift. My God he’s even reduced to washing his car and weeding the flower bed – whatever next, wiping his own backside! ‘I still remember ration books’, says he. Only if his Farley’s Rusks were rationed, all rationing ended when he was four. Silly prat.