by John B
So, the 10p tax rate fuss is resolved. Instead of a million or so people losing money equivalent to a bag of chips a week with a couple of million gaining money equivalent to half a bag of chips, the government is going to borrow enough money for an extra half a bag of chips and give it to the people who lost out in the first place.
Now, this is good news for those who like chips, and it’s even better news for those who like embarassing political comedy climbdowns. It’s also reasonably good news for people who like sensible economic policies (Keynesian injections of money into the economy to avert falling demand? Check. Providing economic stimulus through tax cuts targeted at the poor rather than increased government spending? Check.)
However, it’s not good news for people who think politics is a terribly serious business about which we should be terribly serious at all times (these people are known as “politicians and aspiring politicians”). For example, Bel of ‘thinking’ fame believes that:
I remember last year, after Gordon Brown decided not to hold a General Election, Nick Robinson made a comment to the effect that the decision did not have major consequences for the nation. Maybe not for him, but try telling that to people who have been affected by Labour’s damaging policies, and who would have wanted an opportunity to vote them out. Elections can be life-changing events for voters; however, for political journalists, things continue the same.
This runs into an obvious problem: the only “people who have been non-trivially affected by Labour’s damaging policies” are in Iraq and/or dead, and therefore unlikely to vote in a UK general election. Domestically, Labour has brought mildly-armed peace to Northern Ireland; the economy kept up strong economic growth when it was easy, and appears to be doing about as badly (looking slightly less badly at the moment, but we’ll see) as everyone else now that it’s difficult.
What about social policy? Well, crime is down (mostly due to economic prosperity); the educational and healthcare system have become slightly better following huge spending increases; gays and ethnic minorities have a slightly less crap time than they did 10 years ago; and that’s about it. On the minus side, err, people who hate gays and ethnic minorities don’t get to enjoy their suffering as much as they did 10 years ago, and that’s about it. Individuals continue to have horrible things happening to them, ranging from rape to murder to cancer to Saturday night TV, but none of them are really the government’s fault or would be appreciably different under any plausible alternative government.
[Sarcastic interlude to head off libertarians: we have, of course, lost all our civil liberties; habeas corpus has been abolished, jury trials are a thing of the past, and the police can brutally detain and/or shoot us at the slightest provocation. As anyone with an Irish accent or a background in coal mining will happily confirm, these are things which have never previously happened, and which certainly would never have happened under the kind of Conservative or Labour government we had in either the 1970s or the 1980s.]
In short, the reason why the media, and also why nearly all the general public (unless they’re a member of a particular social minority group that one party particularly hates - feminists, gays and foreigners for the Tories, or Christian fundies and blimpish buffoons for Labour) treat politics as a comedy show with no real relevance to their lives is that, err, it is one. And that won’t change unless a real socialist or real fascist party becomes sufficiently popular to challenge the “two mildly capitalist, mildly statist, mildly socially liberal, with a bit of variance at the margins” model. Which hopefully they won’t.
[yes, I'm aware that a Libertarian party could in theory also challenge the model, but the chances of more than 10 geeks and their dogs supporting one are rather slim...]
[...] be delighted to hear that The Sharpener is back online and that I have a new post there on why it’s right to treat politics as a trivial and irrelevant [...]
the government is going to borrow enough money for an extra half a bag of chips and give it to the people who lost out in the first place
Not quite true. There are certain groups, making up about 20% of the orginial 10p tax losers, who have not been fully compensated by Darling’s manoevers. Meanwhile, there are other groups, who gained from slash of the basic rate to 20p, who have gained even more by the increased tax allowance. So its not as mathematically sound as you suggest.
But I’m acknowledging that they lost a *whole* bag of chips to start with.
You’re right about the compenation also benefiting some non-chip-losers.
Also, it’s my experience, John, that if you take all those piffling half bags of chips and pile them together, they can be exchanged for things like a month’s council tax or a gas bill instalment. That way you get fewer letters from utility companies and the council asking where their chips are.
Labour hates Christian fundies? I was rather under the impression that many of them are Christian fundies…
John, how does a consideration of the implications of peak oil, ensuing climate change, depletion of biodiversity, ever increasing fiscal inequality and the supremacy of fundamental capitalism in world bodies such as the IMF and World Bank affect your view of the world.
I feel it casts the Labour government’s ‘business friendly’ era in power as a complete failure to address these threats to our society. Dumbed-down criticism of our pseudo-democracy like yours contributes exactly squat to efforts to move away from the malignant stagnancy of two party politics.
“John, how does a consideration of the implications of peak oil”
Oil gets more expensive over 20 years. We substitute to other energy sources. Economic growth is slowed by half a percentage point as a result.
“ensuing climate change”
People in Bangladesh drown; people in sub-Saharan Africa starve; nothing much happens in the UK and we carry on as usual. Unless there’s a hell, in which case we’re slightly more likely to end up there.
“depletion of biodiversity”
It’s a shame, especially for the creatures thus killed, but up there with the art thief whose mum destroyed a priceless collection of stolen paintings in terms of Things To Worry About.
“ever increasing fiscal inequality”
Fiscal inequality is decreasing, as falling poverty rates in India and China offset mild increases in inequality in the west and the continued buggeredness of Africa.
“and the supremacy of fundamental capitalism in world bodies such as the IMF and World Bank”
…has probably contributed to said falling poverty rates.
“Dumbed-down criticism of our pseudo-democracy like yours contributes exactly squat to efforts to move away from the malignant stagnancy of two party politics.”
But I don’t have any desire to move away from the malignant stagnancy of two-party politics. At the moment, everything is pretty much OK; Brown may have the charisma of a beetle and Cameron may be a grinning ninny, but neither of them show any particular signs of going too far away from what we currently have.
This is a good thing, as far as I can see - the three most popular alternative models (green, hard left and neo-fascist) would all be much, much worse…