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Possibly, they cannot face the truth themselves. The leaders' six billion squabble over National Insurance is too trivial in the scheme of things to be anything other than a bit of sawdust in the voters' eyes. In fact, our whole world is splintering about us. We face the real problem of soverign default.
The admitted debt is rising by half a billion a day. The treasury says it will rise to one and a half trillion. It is actually more. And we have a rising old population and no money for their care and pensions, rising borrowing rates and a sinking pound.
If they were candid, we should all start to panic. In fact the climate change nuts are a useful distraction, even better than the nugatory 6 billion distraction.
If they won't cut, there is only one way out - hyperinflation. They will simply print the money we need. We shall all be beggars if this is the route.
Don't accept this. We have to cut down the size of Government. We have to face up to the cuts. The debt bubble is bursting. We have to make things again and trade them and we have to stop pretending Big Government can manage anything.
Sovereign default is terrible. People died in Greece today. For Heaven's sake, let's wake up and cut Government down to size. Vote UKIP.
]]>I do agree with you about policies and their importance for anyone who wants to vote on principle. Check out the UKIP ones here: http://sites.google.com/site/policyprompt/. We want less Government, more manufacture, less political correctness and less EU and more freedom.
]]>Now it is sunny and lovely, two days later. I am taking my dog for a bound in the bluebells. But tonight I am with Mike Natrass, your UKIP MEP, to answer EU and voter questions at the Fox in Lye.
Don't count on the glorious morning weather lasting all day! I think that there is a risk that, in these lovely spring days, we forget the national crisis we are in and voters might not quite comprehend how bad Labour spending has been. We are broke, we do face a crisis as bad as Greece's and we have to cut down the cost and size of Government.
]]>He says, of the Bridge Radio Debate with us and the Independent candidate, "It was however interesting to see the areas we agreed on: Help for small businesses, electoral reform and the need to take care of our resources for instance (I don't think I'm misrepresenting them)."
Well, we agreed on some subject headings. That's it! Our policies could not be further appart.
For example, on small business, our view is lower tax, no National insurance - a tax on jobs - and deregulate by removing the 120000 Brussels regulations.
As the country is completely broke, facing catastrophe of sovereign default and unpaid government bills, like Greece, UKIP is up-front that we need to face radical cuts and the public sector must be reduced to a minimal thing.
For example, we would cut out the £50bn worth recommended by the taxpayers' alliance, as well as other cuts - Europe, Climate Change Act, aid etc. This would mean the removal of the intermediaries that let Government direct our services. This would be good as it would at last allow local headmasters or Matrons to make the decisions themselves without the target and paperwork waste. But this plan does mean cutting jobs in the unproductive public sector so that manufacture and small business can grow. We have to say this striaght.
The Greens say no cuts at all to services, no job losses and raised National Insurance. They even want to carry on supporting other countries with aid. They think government can 'invest' (and we say this won't work); in fact we think most green industry is probably more wishful thinking than a real business opportunity (like the banks) if it has to be state-subsidised.
It all comes back to a basic problem the Left has. Particularly Gordon Brown. They think money is something just there to be shared around. If someone is richer, they say, it is because the poorer are deprived.
Money is not something just there as of right for everyone. It is the result of individuals working hard, producing things other people want and saving for their families. Having money does not mean you deprived other people of it unless you are a thief, a taxman, an overpaid chief exec of a public body, or a subsidised banker!
If they don't cut, the Government, of any party, will end up just printing more money to pay debts as the lenders aren't going to lend any more to a country that makes nothing.
Printing money will dilute its value. We face high inflation and reduced real incomes. Without cuts, our debts are too large to pay another way . And this will rob anyone who did save pensions, or pay off a mortgage; because inflation taxes savers. In fact, we are all going to pay for the wasteful Labour years if we can't cut Government down to size.
]]>The Left's last 60 years' search for 'fairness' has been like Father Ted let loose on a car. They want a more equal society. This chimes with us if we take perfectly natural offence when some people are very rich and others are in want. And the answer from the Left is that those who are rich have taken a share that morally belongs to the poor, and deprived them.
But except at the extremes of wealth, this is simply not true. And like the Fathers, the more the Left re-distribute, the more unequal we get.
The Labour Government has tried harder than most to even things out: tax credits, minimum wage, non-dom tax, money for poorer children in education, the regional development funds for poor areas, task forces on deprivation, .... I could go on for pages.
This massive redistribution of wealth has ended with the rich richer than ever, and the poorest relatively poorer. The bottom centile has got poorer by all measurements. The GINI coefficient has widenend - we are more unequal. Social mobility has declined. And rather than pay for this, the very rich just move, while the 'coping classes' who work and pay taxes, have to cough up ever more in their pay packets.
Socialism does not make us more equal. And this Labour Government, with their special interest friends - MPs,bankers, big business partners in PFIs and outsourcing, highly paid chief executives of councils - all these get richer with special patronage from Government.
The problem is that Labour targets, like Father Ted, here and there. T ax credits are for those that work so many hours. New Deal for Communities applies here and there. They also like targeting people who are the more-well-off-poor particularly because it is cheapest to give them a little money and raise them out of a poverty category.
And this is so unfair. If you work hard, get qualifications, find a job, save money, each time you get on in life, you are in Left terms, depriving the poor and should be taxed more. A big misunderstanding of the Left, is that they wrongly think riches are just there and should be shared, rather than something that each of us, more or less makes when we work or save.
And finally, one cannot have equality of outcome and equality under the law. These things are mutually exclusive. As soon as you decide someone deserves to get more, you are treating them differently.
We must help the very poorest to the essentials of life; but above that we must treat everyone equally. The state should stop levelling us out. It should allow some people naturally to do better because that makes the whole country richer. It should encourage grammar schools, wealth creation and saving. Real equality is the consequence of evenly applied laws.
]]>I was greeted with incredulity when I said I was unconvinced by climate change, but with some encouragement when I said that investment banks should be allowed to die if they took risks that didn't pay off.
I met some charming people, including a lady who had worked with prisoners and a most interesting poet.
The interesting thing was that someone in the audience said that they thought it was wrong to mock people who did not 'believe' in climate change. Thank you whoever that was. Why is it a belief, all of a sudden? Science must be disprovable, or it is not science. The un-manipulated raw data from East Anglia and the McIntyre analysis would suggest doubt. However, if climate change is a religion, its followers do not care for apostasy.
A sad question from a lady from Zimbabwe had me totally at a loss. Apart from moral support and medical aid, I do not know what we can do or afford to do. I felt guilty, particularly after the sad death of cousin Peter out there, that I could pledge nothing more than my sympathy.
Thank you, Churches Together, for your hospitality and democratic service. It was a pleasure to talk to Phil on Bridge radio and a great pleasure to meet the voters.
]]>It made me wonder if Labour support will collapse in even their most loyal areas. So many Labour supporters told me they were just not going to vote, if I can judge from today. The non-voters from Labour in Hodge Hill seemed to be ex-car factory workers. If the purpose of Labour was to give a voice to workers, then as the jobs have gone perhaps the raison d'etre of Labour has gone, too.
We live in a different world now and future manufacturing is going to be in small, highly skilled and innovative comopanies. I have seen some of these thriving in Stourbridge with exports up despite the recession. One of our branch members runs a small company and he says that the workers are as close as family - not surprising after 20 years of close collaboration and solving business problems together. I cannot help but think it is better when workers and managers are close and while the capital risk taker may get more profit (or loss in a bad year), there is a basic equality.
Under Labour the gap between the highest paid and the lowest has grown. The poorest tenth have got poorer because they do not benefit from redistributionist tax credits or minimum wages, that centile being largely unwaged. Labour, for all their wealth re-distribution, created an ever more unequal society. And particularly in the public sector, top salaries are far too high. Socialists do not do capitalism well. They favour big business, special friends, special interests and over-paid mandarins. Their complicated tax and benefits system favours the very rich and the devious. The middle income workers carry the largest load of the tax.
UKIP are unusual. We accept that some will do better than others. I personally eschew social justice entirely. And we have no wish for equality of outcome. We want instead equality before the law, equal treatment, and therefore equal opportunity. You can't of course, as the philosophers have often pointed out, have both. If you treat everyone equally, they won't all end up the same because some are cleverer, luckier, better at this or that. This shows in our pro-grammar school policies, our simple flat rate of tax.
We propose that nobody pays tax on the first £11,500 of income so that the very poorest do not pay at all. Above that sum there is just one tax of 31% and no National Insurance, and no difference in corporation tax.
Volumes of tax code are reduced to one simple A4 piece of paper. In countries who have done flat tax, revenue rises because low tax is good for business and there is no point in avoiding tax as there are no loop-holes.
The benefits system would be similarly simple. You can roll all the benefits - jJobseeker's Allowance, Incapacity Benefit, Income Support, Carer's Allowance, Statutory Maternity Pay and student grants into one flat-rate Basic Cash Benefit ('BCB').
If people claim BCB they forfeit their tax free personal allowance of £11,500. BCB will not be means tested so fraud prevention costs and administration costs will be low.
So if someone is on benefits and they receive an offer of part time work, they lose nothing by taking up work. (This is not true at the moment where people often lose money if they take up work.) In the new system the worker simply pays tax on their wages. If their work increases at some point they will gain if they switch from the benefit onto their personal allowance. The exchequer gains, the person gets the chance to work without penalty and the employer finds it easy to get a flexible workforce.
As the meerkat says: simples.
]]>UKIP came first in the region in the Euro elections last year. THere are two UKIP MEPs here. We have local councillors and have nearly filled all the PPC vacancies. We are the only genuinely different party and the voters need to know about us to make their choice. Yet, in spite of this, I was excluded from debating with Lib Lab and Con who were coming later; and told to talk about the campaign alongside Will of the Green Party.
Actually it was very pleasant to meet Will who is very likeable and amazingly, since UKIP thinks Climate Change alarmism is dangerous nonsense and Will clearly thinks it very important, we did find a few common points. One was that the other three parties were the same and at least we offered the electorate a choice - in his case he said, really green policies instead of sham ones - in my case the only party offering to cut down the size of the state.
Anyway the BBC wanted to film us staring into a window with balloons and party stuff so they could say we were being shut out of the main parties' party.
I can't understand why we should want to show ourselves this way. IT is after all the BBC who were shutting us out this evening. THey are making the story and have their own predefined ideas. I thought journalists should find stories, not make them. Badly done, BBC.
At least its better than the other day when they said they would film me if I found a horse and supported fox hunting - I turned that one down as totally irrelevant to Stourbridge. They were asking, by the way, because Labour wanted a class war story. Why are they so pro-Labour?
[This paragraph has been the subject of a complaint and has been suspended. The complainant has retracted the facts on which the opinion was based.]
]]>Gordon Brown's spending on banks, wars and grandiose socialist transformation schemes has done this.
Which brings me to my point. To avoid Zimbabwe-like poverty, what can we do? I have to point out that the three old parties are not going to do enough.
The Conservatives, Labour and Lib Dems have identified only a few billion pounds of cuts. Meanwhile they simultaneously commit to more spending.
As the total debt is heading for thousands of billions. £1,400,000,000,000 officially (And Mr Brown has hidden possibly about as much again off balance sheet), it is quite clear these cuts won't be nearly enough. And borrowing is rising by half a billion more every day. Brown's borrowing is like drinking in an alcoholic who needs a liver transplant.
What we have to do is cut far more, and quickly. Nothing short of a complete transformation of state activity will do.
Here is a start of £100 billion: most of the £50 billion a year spent on quangos, stop the Climate Change Act (£18 billion), overseas aid (£7 billion) quit Europe (6 billion a year), IT projects (13 billion), Afghanistan (£4.5 billion) Government, consultants (£2.5 billion), 'perk credit cards for public servants (£1 billion), public servants earning over 100K a year (£1 billion) public sector publicity (£250 million),
But that's not enough. Our population is aging and we are wasting over half our health budget on administration. We need a smaller state. Services should be run locally by good professionals, not ruled from Whitehall. Headmasters should run schools, matron should rule the wards and local bobbies should be given far more discretion. Cut government down to size.
Only UKIP wants Government to do less.
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Messers Brown, Cameron and Clegg were all the same. They are deceiving us by arguing about that 6 billion. Its like fussing about spoiling your hair when you are drowning.
We are taking on half a billion more debt every single day. We are borrowing 600 billion more over the next three years. There is no way we can protect public services because we are completely broke.
Our children will be paying tax for years, just to pay interest on this debt, let alone pay it back. And if Brown prints more money we shall have high prices too. We face real poverty and demotion to third world status.
Then they pretend they can save 6 billion here, or a few billion there, and still pay out for all their Big Government plans.
There is only one answer - cut government down to size - in every sense.
Low tax, low spending, fewer state employees, cut out the £50 billion spent on quangos, stop bailing out government's special friends in banking, forget the huge cost of the EU, cut out the IT projects, equalities spending and the climate change tosh.
We have to get back to manufacture and trade and make real wealth and real jobs. To do this we have to be free. We have to stop political meddling, political correctness and political targets.
Forget the three identical triplets - they speak with their fingers crossed behind their backs and their eyes closed, because they know the reality is that we are looking over the edge of a void and its government that got us there.
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