Once every month until I get sick of it, I intend to remind anyone whose attention I can get of this…
PARTS of the United Kingdom have become so heavily dependent on government spending that the private sector is generating less than a third of the regional economy, a new analysis has found.
The study of “Soviet Britain” has found the government’s share of output and expenditure has now surged to more than 60% in some areas of England and over 70% elsewhere…
The state now looms far larger in many parts of Britain than it did in former Soviet satellite states such as Hungary and Slovakia as they emerged from communism in the 1990s, when state spending accounted for about 60% of their economies.
It was the redoubtable Thaddeus Tremayne who first mentioned this back on January 25th of this year in an article called ‘Narrative narcosis’.
So next time some purblind fool tells you that our economic woes have been caused by ‘capitalism’ rather than ‘regulatory statism’ and ‘big government’, make a print out of that Times article on good high quality paper, roll it up tightly, and shove it very forcefully wherever your imagination and their complacency will allow.
Unbelievable. I wonder about the US stats though, as it is a much larger economy than the UK, and so its part in this crisis is also much larger.
The “John Galt Uprising” is a minor blip, probably an internet-based campaign by a small # of fanatics.
http://www.realmeme.com/roller/page/realmeme?entry=galt_meme
Good try, guys, but I don’t think it’s going to work.
Broward, I took a look at the link. I see that the “Tea Party”, anti-stimulus bill folk are being demonised as nothing more than stooges for wicked big business, or mad Ayn Rand cultists. Now it is certainly true that the late, great Miss Rand predicted much of the sort of current clusterfuck now embracing the US/RoW. It is also true that her book, Atlas Shrugged, has themes in it that resonate well today, which explains why that late 1950s novel is surging up the Amazon lists. This might obviously bother people who perhaps hoped that her novel and its message would fade away. It won’t and isn’t. Unlike the nonsense of the preposterous Naomi Klein, Rand’s book is a piece of fiction about reality, not a “non-fiction” book that is riddled with make-believe.
That’s got the week started nicely!
This story has been doing the rounds for years, the first time I saw the official stats was back in October 2007, but no doubt it has been true for years or even decades before then.
Oh it will “work” because you arrogent statist fools will have produced 1930’s style unemployment within the next year and a half and millions of responsible savers that you guys have wiped out, or have voted to be wiped out finacially, will start looking for people to hang from the nearest lamp post. I will be very happy to be pointing them in the right direction.
Is this widely known? No it is not. Various politico professed to be ‘shocked’ when this story broke, yet has it materially changed the nature of the public debate? No it has not. That is why I intend to keep repeating it over and over and over again.
Keep repeating it, Perry. And we should also repeat some other facts from time to time:
About 1m public sector jobs have been created since 1997, explaining much of the surge in the cost of government and the crapness thereof.
In recent years, more than 5m able bodied adults have lived on benefits, with more than half of all new jobs going to immigrants. This was in place long before the financial crisis erupted.
Public sector debt is understated by tens of billions of pounds due to the Enron-like use of PFI “off-balance-sheet” accounting. Had this occured in the private sector, you can bet that NuLab and its media cheerleaders would have been all over it.
We should also highlight data on the outflow of Britons to more pleasant lands, especially of doctors, entrepreneurs, architects, technicians, software engineers, etc.
Perry, agreed it is important to keep repeating it. My point was that even though it has been doing the rounds for years, it does not appear to be widely known.
Jonathan, there are TWO million extra taxpayer funded jobs in the UK since 1997. It’s gone up from six to eight million (one in four of all workers), and there must have been a million or two too many back in 1997. Re PFI, it’s worse than that – having paid over the odds to get these liabilities off their books, the government is now giving the PFI contractors interest rate subsidies.
Forget the BBC Listen in to Radio Truth Radio Here
Mark, thanks for the correction, duly noted. I got the figures for the number of public sector jobs from the ONS website; I admit that this is a definitional issue, however. One has to also account for all the consultancy jobs that are, to all intents and purposes, public jobs, paid for by the taxpayer.
To be honest the sheer scale of the expansion of the state is something that is too depressing to contemplate for very long.
JP, the discrepancy arises because I prefer the International Labour Organisation definition, which includes anybody paid by the taxpayer, i.e. GPs (nominally self employed), university lecturers, fakecharity workers, not to mention contractors, consultants, dinner ladies and dustbin men who nominally work for private companies etc etc.
Government spending in the United States is also vast.
Especially now that Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac have “come out” as being part of the government – which, being under goverment support and under the “influence” of Barney Frank and Christopher Dodd, they always were.
P.S. so is Citigroup and so is Bank of America – and the other “too big to fail” banks.
The money they have comes from the government – and they are told what to do by the govenment.
Although (unlike Britain) the fiction of private ownership is being maintained.
Lastly General Electric is government also.
If your debts are backed by the government – you are the government.
Do not believe me?
Have a look at NBC news sometime.
Will UKGov allow ITV or C4 to fail?
Thanks for bringing this article to my attention. Should be front page news everywhere. Makes me sick looking at it but tells us exactly what Labour do: tax hard working private enterprise and create McJobs on the state for their cronies.
There is a model for British broadcasting – Channel Five.
“But they do not have long news shows Paul”.
They broadcast the basic facts – and do not bother (because they have not got time) for all the leftist “interpretation” that news and current affairs shows on the other networks go in for.
C5 is at a massive commercial disadvantage because it can not even get a good signal in many parts of this country.
But with the “digital swich over” this will not matter.
People who like long news and current affairs shows (people like me) can find plenty of other stations.
For example, I mostly watch Fox News.
Leftists would watch other stations.
There is no need for a B.B.C. or C4 – even for leftist propaganda (as there are plenty of other sources of this “public service broadcasting”).
C5 a model for british broadcasting?!
please no. foreign owned, crap programming, and devoid of originality, wit, or charm.
at the very least the bbc is making programmes for us, not creating audience demographics to sell advertising.
still, doesnt mean it needs the resources of a small carribean island to run the thing. freeze the fee, cut back on ludicrous amounts of duplication, and put the brakes on presenter wage inflation.
Yes it is making propaganda programmes for ‘us’. You want it? Fine you pay for it mate, just get your fucking hand out of my pocket when looking for how to fund the shite you want to watch.