A load of Balls

Have all the main party politicians lost their senses. Now Ed Balls has joined the list. The last thing we need to do is to cut jobs and reawaken the slumbering recession. Part of the increase in borrowing is caused by the recession, a drop in tax revenues and an increase in benefits payments. Both of these will come down as the recession recedes, trying to force it down artificially would just make the situation worse.

If Ed Balls really wants to cut costs here is one simple proposal from an educational manager, do not introduce any new or changed plans! Perhaps closing down his department and returning power to local government. One final thought on this, when I was first a school governor financial control was with the local authority but then the Tories devolved many activities. So now each school has to have someone to run the finances, someone to worry about employment practices etc. So there has been a vast increase in bureaucracy in schools with jobs that were done in local authorities.

Another way to cut expenditure would be to significantly increase the minimum wage. The taxpayer subsidies firms that pay badly through benefits and and tax. If the minimum wage was made up to a decent level this government subsidy would vanish and so cut public exppenditure. Of course the bosses would oppose this but why would they give up their share of public expenditure.

Waste: an essential

At the moment many people are demanding the elimination of "waste". We can all save money by cutting out waste. Politicians are very fond of this mantra because they claim that this method will enable them to save public expenditure and maintain services. But is this really feasible?

I am reminded of the story of Shylock who only wanted his "pound of flesh" but could not get just his pound of flesh. Perhaps it is the same with waste. Is waste the oil that stops the engine overheating, does it provide the flexibility when things go wrong? If there was no waste everything would have to work perfectly all the time. Systems would be designed to work at the limits of their capabilities at all times.

It would be dangerous for planes to fly with no waste, extra back up facilities, exactly the amount of fuel if the everything went according to plan. So why do we expect organizations to work up to their maximum capacity all the time without back-up facilities. If we could eliminate waste from all systems would they just become arthritic and seize up.

The question is how much waste, or spare capacity, do we need?

selfish nimbies

I am probably returning to a topic I have discussed before but it gets me down. It is especially true of wealthy people who live in beautiful isolated places.

They expect roads so they can drive there and electricity and probably fast broadband connections BUT they don't want to have anything spoiling their beautiful surroundings, let the peasants suffer, seems to be the attitude.

The same things happen when there are campaigns against airports and airport extensions. The only people who should be allowed to complain are those who never fly! Otherwise all toy are saying is that other people should suffer!

We have to take responsibility for our actions, we can't just say let others suffer!