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September 25, 2004
The overtaxed awakening?
The latest YouGov poll has produced some information that should be worrying our Illustrious Leader and the rest of the Ruling Classes - including the Civil Service. Asking a series of straightforward questions about how people see the taxation levels, and how these are spent, and - surprise, surprise - people don't feel a need to pay more, or that the government spend it well!
This has been slewed by a very subtle form of brainwashing over a number of years - the subtle, one almost says subliminal, suggestion that it is somehow "wrong" or "selfish" to resent paying a large chunk of your hardearned income. The LibDems are at it again this week at their Conference - pay more tax so we can "distribute it to the poor for you" is the battle cry, and Labour are on the same bandwagon. The Conservatives seem to be afraid of tackling this head on and the polls they all usually quote generally have the questions constructed in a manner which leaves one little option but to give the answers the polltakers want.
To quote from the Telegraph report on this ....
And how well that cynical formula has worked. Equating a willingness to pay more (and more) tax with moral goodness, and its opposite with selfish hard-heartedness, has so muddied the argument, so subverted the whole vocabulary of public discourse about political virtue and social responsibility, that it is almost impossible to utter the words that would open the argument to examination.
Well, it seems that, at last, we have a poll result which says exactly what people think about this. Could it be the first stirrings of a change of mindset? Could it be that the vast tax-burdened proletariat is awakening to the fact that more tax simply means more useless bureaucrats and fatter politicians? Could it be that "the masses" as unreconstructed Left wing socialists of the ban everything persuasion are finally stirring and saying, enough of this nonsense?
Certainly the questions about the Welfare State would seem to indicate this. The vast majority of those polled indicated that they thought the entire welfare system was benefitting the wrong people. It promoted idleness and penalised the truly needy - the aged and the infirm - while rewarding the feckless.
The usual siboleths all get trotted out whenever this sort of debate is attempted. The ones about "taxing the well off, so that the money can be used to alleviate poverty" or "to improve the NHS and make it fairer for everyone" (usually means that everyone gets the same sub-standard third world treatment!) or the famous "to provide a higher standard of education in the poorest inner city and deprived areas." Does it actually happen/ No chance at all - what usually happens is that the bulk of the extra money gets spent on salaries for more administrators (got to have them to make sure public money isn't wasted!) and on very expensive "initiatives" dreamed up by even more expensive consultants. Any left over generally goes in the generous annual salary awards Parliament gives itself. (In the last three years Parliament has given itself pay rises well above inflation - usually by a factor of 10 - and in the first year of the fire fighters dispute awarded themselves 40% - something they aren't prepared to allow anyone else to do!)
People have woken up to the fact that the Civil Service continues to grow exponentially, despite the much trumpetted "cuts", while the actual services, Army Navy, Airforce, Police, Nursing, Fire, and so on are all being "managed" out of existence. The costs keep going up, but the services keep going down.
Perhaps the Political Classes would do well to take a good hard look at reality, perhaps even take the trouble to listen to what the taxpayer and the electorate are saying - instead of telling us what they want us to say! Perhaps too, the moon is Blue!
Posted by The Gray Monk at September 25, 2004 07:58 AM
Comments
It sounds like the LibDems are driving towards the socitiy that Karl Marx would be proud of.
Posted by: skipjack at September 25, 2004 12:05 PM
Wasn't "the fact that the Civil Service continues to grow exponentially " the reason for Parkinson's Law. I always assumed that the book was a factual description of reality in the British public service. The key example was of course the colonial affairs department which reached its maximum size AFTER the last colony gained independence.
Posted by: Ozguru at September 27, 2004 04:50 AM