2013, Here We Come

December 30th, 2012

2013, Here We Come

If you thought 2012 was turbulent, wait and see what the New Year has in store!

Nationally, I hope the chancellor remembers all the things he said when the current government was elected.  The temptation to start printing money and borrowing more rather than making the cuts that are required will be strong.  Special groups – many very worthy and honourable – will plead for protection.  Cases will be made for state-sponsored intervention to promote “growth” (which will, over the next year, become the most repeated and abused word in politics.)  No doubt I will be guilty of doing some of this pleading myself – because hypocrisy is okay (even valued) when you’re defending your own.

But the truth is that, like I’ve always said, there is no  magic bullet.  There never was. There never will be.  When you’ve dug yourselves a giant hole full of debt and state subsidy and market-stifling regulation and special privilege there is only one way out.  Get rid of the duff regulations and red tape – and then do a whole lot of hard work.  Conservatives – and British people in general – understand the value of hard work.  We just expect that at the end of a day’s graft (in whatever profession) we will get to keep the lion’s share of the reward we have earned.  This is as true for the bricklayer, or shop assistant, or hairdresser, or policeman, or civil servant as it is for the lawyer, or banker, or union boss.

I said three years ago, and two years ago, and last year, that barring some miracle like finding oil under Milton Keynes - there will be no miraculous burst back into economic good health.  This country will bump along a difficult line, occasionally dropping into a “technical recession” and occasionally looking slightly rosier.  Of course, we have Shale Gas now – and it may be that this will prove the economic miracle we need in a few years time.  But until and if that occurs our choices are limited.  This really has not been a recession, which is why we are not now seeing the recession end.  This has been a correction.  From years of pretending we were wealthier than we are by borrowing ourselves into oblivion back to the true situation that has been created by years of ill-considered and wrong-headed economic and social policy.

The Left Wing of politics, both nationally and locally, spend their entire time doing two things.  (In this I include those Wisbech “Independents” who are about as politically-independent as Karl Marx.)  They try to sow discontent by pretending that money can be plucked from thin air to appease the special concerns of anybody who they think might vote for them.  And then they pretend that previous bad policy was not in error and try to fix it with more suggestions of even worse policy.   It is a cynical and dangerous ploy, but one that does sometimes bear fruit for them.  My hope is that nationally and locally the sensible British people will reject this negative politicking and paucity of ideas – in the same way they would reject Get-Rich-Quick schemes and snake oil and Pyramid Selling.  It is also my hope that our national leaders will try to remember the Real World and the Real Folk who live in it, so that when they next say we are All In This Together it has the ring of truth.  Because we actually really are all in this together.  It’s better to find out now, rather than the hard way later.

On the positive side we should remember that the United Kingdom is second to no nation in the world for invention, entrepreneurship or hard work.  We have centuries of history and excellence to demonstrate this.  These traits, so special to this little island and its smaller neighbours, have not gone away (no matter what the Daily Mail fears!)  They are alive and well and ready to burst back into life.  If the State will just get out of the way and let it happen.  It needs no help.  It just needs a little less hindrance, and fewer people pretending that making stuff, doing stuff, creating stuff, is somehow evil.  It isn’t.  It’s wonderful.  And we do it so well.

Rant over.

I wish you all a healthy, happy and prosperous New Year.

- Steve Tierney

test Filed under New Year's Rant | Comments (2)

2 Responses to “2013, Here We Come”

  1. Martin on December 30, 2012 8:31 pm

    How about this for an economical miracle . Cancel all interest .
    Tell the government not too pay the banksters there interest .
    Simples . We may then have to fight there U.N . Peacekeepers
    (debt collectors ) but so what , it’s got to be better than living as
    there slaves forever .

    Moderator (Steve Tierney)’s Response:
    Martin, I understand where you are coming from, but your suggestion is not what it appears. The “banksters” should not have been bailed out, I agree. That was bad. But the money the banks have is not “their own” they are lending money that has been invested by others. Some are rich, some are very poor, some are young, some are old, some are pension funds and savings accounts. “Cancelling all debt” means, essentially, rewarding all the people who have borrowed at the expense of all the people who have loaned. And while there is a popular idea that people who loan money are “bad” – actually everybody with a bank account that pays interest is loaning money. Many normal, hard-working people save and allow those savings to be loaned out to earn the interest. The bad guys are not where you think they are and the only thing that “cancelling all debt” would achieve is a massive global act of theft from millions. And if the managed to bankrupt all the banks, new banks would simply open the next day because the demand for those services would not have disappeared. Plus, I really cant support deliberately not paying debts we have voluntarily accrued (even if only by our choice of government through the ballot box.) Your economic miracle would actually be an economic catastrophe leading to a social catastrophe on a global scale.

  2. Martin on December 31, 2012 7:45 pm

    Thanks for the reply I see what your saying and hey maybe I was being simplistic . What I am saying is usury the problem . Using money as a commodity , it’s not a commodity . It’s a means of exchanging goods . It has very little intrinsic value . People would not lose there investment if they lost there interest . I know one may think of inflation . But that’s another form of tax . I’m thinking LIBOR , I’m thinking HSBC laundering drug money . Most of all I’m thinking USURY . That evil that takes the child from the womb . Noone woul d lose anything only the interest . And barter worked well enough before the moneylenders came .

    Moderator (Steve Tierney)’s Response:

    Actually, charging interest on lending money probably dates back as long as barter does. I’m not suggesting there aren’t dirty deeds done, but the principle of interest isn’t a bad thing in and of itself – it is the money that a lender earns to compensate for the risk they take. Without there being some payment for the risk – why would somebody lend money to a stranger? That stranger might run off with it, or just use it badly and never be able to pay it back. Perhaps you would do it out of the goodness of your heart, but after a few losses you might become leery of that. In fact, the idea of interest is vital to the functioning of markets and the voluntary cooperation of individuals.

    That said, on many things we agree. Inflation IS another form of tax (a really nasty one.) And it is wrong to borrow money and expect somebody else to pay it back – particularly your unborn future generations. A deal between two consenting adults, one to loan some funds they have saved through their own hard work or voluntarily reduced consumption, to the other who wishes to invest it in greater productivity themselves – is not a bad thing at all. It has led to much of the modern progress we see. But a loan taken by a state body, simply to avoid admitting they are living beyond their means, and passed to the next generations – is very much a bad thing.

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