Tuesday 8 September 2009
Cameron's Cost-Cutting
In the great scheme of things, the cost of the subsidised food in the Palace of Westminster is below negligible. But with this, the cuts in Ministerial salaries, and the rest of it, Cameron is dropping broad enough hints. These are not within any context of tackling income disparity, including the gap between Westminster insiders and the rest of us. Rather, this is about re-restricting office to the independently wealthy.
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This is just silly. Cameron is proposing to cut subsidies so that food and drink bought in parliament's canteens costs the same as comparable food bought outside - which are regularly bought by people who are not independently wealthy (the real impact of this, actually, is on MPs' researchers, who earn very little and benefit from the subsidised cafes and bars - not that I weep for them, but they will be hit much harder than MPs). And he is proposing to cut ministerial salaries so that they range between around £90,000 and £180,000 - again, perfectly good salaries.
ReplyDeleteI agree that Cameron's cost cuttings announced today are negligible. But the agenda is entirely about finding cheap and resonant examples of government spending where savings can easily be made, to make him look austere without having to spell out much more significant and painful cuts in public services. It has absolutely nothing to do with restricting office to the independently wealthy, not least because anyone on an MP's salary, let alone a minister's salary, is by definition not poor.
But they are nowhere near as rich as him and Osborne.
ReplyDeletePlenty of the public sector has subsidised food. Getting rid of it in Parliament is part of something else.
It's true. I was considering standing as an independent until I realised that, as I'm paying off a morgage on the only home I could claim to own, I wouldn't be able to feed myself under Cameron's new rules. I considered slowly starving to death while serving my country, but I have other responsibilities.
ReplyDeleteWithout being unduly immodest, the real tragedy is that the country will never know what it has lost.
This is the start. If it weren't, then Cameron would be talking about income disparity generally, or at the very least in the public sector. But he isn't.
ReplyDeleteCameron and Osborne do not know what it is to *need* to work for a living. Even the PM’s salary is peanuts to them, because they are so abnormal. We already have rich people given peerages and then made Ministers for no pay. Whatever happened to “the rate for the job”, to “the labourer is worthy of his hire”?
While Cameron may know the first of those quotations, he has never heard, still less is he steeped in, the second. If even Brown can set aside these things, then what hope is there from Cameron?
And I don’t rate Cameron’s chances with the wider public sector, either. He and his have not come up through it and do not understand it. Its managers and union leaders will run rings around them. They saw off a public sector union-based Labour Government, so a dilettante Tory one will be a doddle.
I would happily ban any company from paying any of its employees more than ten times what it pays any other, declaring the public sector a single entity for this purpose, pegging its median wage to that in the private sector, and making that the MP’s salary.
But Cameron is not the man to deliver this. I’m not sure who is. But I’m sure that he isn’t.
You're confusing at least 3 things:
ReplyDelete1) The effect of Cameron and Osborne's immense personal wealth on their view of the world
2) Their understanding of the public sector
3) The political significance of a meaningless rise in food prices within Westminster.
You must express your ideas more clearly.
No, you must learn to read. Or at least to grasp the concept of more than one argument in a case.
ReplyDeleteBring back grammar schools and rid us of you people, on whom I refer you to your own first point. There, that one will have thrown you.
Which British newspaper and which American magazine does Ann blog for? I'd love to read her and be in from the start now that she is on the inside track.
ReplyDeleteWhere is her own blog, where they obviously must have noticed her in the first place? So they obviously must read it.
On topic, please.
ReplyDeleteThis blog is now subject to a sustained campaign by bitter people who have watched their critics like you proved completely right about both global capitalism and foreign policy.
ReplyDeleteThey used to be able to get a bit of writing work or hoped they could, now they can't get shit. So they are taking it out on here, including with ridiculous lies about your former dealings with the media groups that now use you and don't use them. FFS don't they think those groups would have noticed?
You shouldn't put them up David. They shouldn't be published anywhere not even in comments on personal blogs.
Thanks, T. Is your mother feeling better? Do email me.
ReplyDeleteBut please do not swear on my blog.
And can we get back on-topic now, please?