Roger Bootle writing in The Telegraph has a damned good suggestion on what the Coagulation could do to boost spending in the UK without any more borrowing as is being suggested by Balls :
But I have a more radical suggestion to make. The Coalition’s plans to increase the overseas aid budget have come in for considerable criticism. But there is a largely unremarked element to this issue. Ours is an economy chronically short of aggregate demand and overseas aid is spent abroad. My suggestion is that the aid budget is suspended and its resources diverted to domestic spending.
Of course, I would rather that the money were disbursed as tax cuts, or spent on defence. But never mind, as long as it is spent in this country it would help to boost aggregate demand. Apparently, Tory leaders are reluctant to tamper with the aid commitment because it is vital to “decontaminating the brand”. Well, I have a suggestion for that. If you must, spend the money on any pet programme favoured by the left. Give it to pensioners or single parents. Or build statues of Neil Kinnock in every town square in the land.
The sums are not peanuts. According to the government’s plans, by 2013 the overseas aid budget will reach £12bn, or 0.7pc of GDP. That is £12bn which could be used to increase demand at home. As for decontaminating the brand, I suspect my proposal would be rather popular.
Rather popular there being a complete understatement I think.
With Income Tax taking somewhere in the region of £4 billion for each percentage point of tax that could pay for a tax cut of around 3% which would go a long way towards filling the gap between frozen wages and ever increasing bills.
Unfortunately, I don’t think our government would do anything of the sort as they don’t seem to give a fuck about the poor buggers who are paying the bills. A great example of this being displayed in todays news with Chris Huhne saying we should fight back against higher fuel bills when he is the biggest cause of the rises in the first place (have a look at this Counting Cats post on the very subject).
Your government should stop funding NGO’s and fake charities.
Damo – indeed – our government should stop funding a lot of things but they ignore us for the 5 years between elections and promise the earth and deliver bugger all when the elections do come around.
“Give it to pensioners or single parents. Or build statues of Neil Kinnock in every town square in the land.”
Pensioners yes. Single parents no, I’m afraid. The huge numbers of them totally reliant on state handouts are one of our major economic problems. Popping a sprog should not mean automatic rights to housing and benefits. If you can’t afford to have a child, don’t have one!
And whilst I think I can see the logic in Kinnock statues, there must surely be better ways of employing stonemasons…
microdave – fully agreed there on the single parent comment in the article – one reason why we are in such deep crap in this country.
I am sure the tories would like to do this one despite the crap that Cameron has sputed in the defence of foreign aid – they are just hamstrung by their very left leaning supposed liberal colleagues.
Given the number of U-turns we have seen I would not be srprised to see some movement on this as it is now gaining legs in the MSM and that is all the Coagulation seem to listen to when they float their new schemes.