I can be stunned and stirred at the same time. Yes, I can. This is something that has been simmering under my hat for a while now, but a recent spate of data releases has finally caused my baffled fury to boil over.
Of what speak I? Why, Albion's perfidious government. In what has to be the grandest gerrymandering achievement ever, Labour has managed to create a vast class of people so utterly beholden to them that it is unimaginable for these folks to vote for anyone else. And who are these sheep? Why, public servants in all their disguises.
It is absolutely breath-taking. During the 10-odd years of Britain's economic boom, a period that our man Gordon Brown attributed entirely to his own skill (further embellished by his 'no more boom and bust' speeches), which part of the workforce added more jobs? You guessed it - the public sector. Between 1998 and 2007, of the 1.2 million jobs added in urban UK, two-thirds (two-thirds!) were in some bureaucracy or the other. In some parts of the UK, state employees are 70% of the workforce. We might as well be living in the USSR.
And what sorts of jobs are these? Not all necessary ones, of course, like teachers or police or nurses. Oh no. There were new metrics established that determined the efficacy of teachers and nurses and policemen. Who would monitor these metrics? The newly employed 'managers', of course. And watchers-to-watch-watchers in some surreal exponential series of artificial jobs.
To attract suitable talent from the private sector, massive salaries were offered to such worthies as heads of the various municipal authorities. Many of them were paid more than the Prime Minister, even.
Meanwhile, to fund all these pen-pushers and layabouts and non-jobs, the Treasury under Labour issued billions of sterling in debt, so that when they really should have been paying down the deficit, they instead caused it to swell to gargantuan proportions. When the crash occurred in 2007-2008, obviously the fiscal situation then took a further plunge into the abyss.
Of course, the joke, dismal as it is, doesn't end there. It turns out that these leeches on the body politic actually - in the median - earn more (£539 per week) than the private sector employee (£465).
In what universe is this sustainable? The private sector pays for most of this largesse in the form of tax. The state has continued to grow and grow. This makes eminent sense during a recession. But it made no sense at all during the years of growth.
Meanwhile, there are still more benefits to a public sector job. No matter what you earn, you are guaranteed a nice final-salary pension when you retire. (Civil servants who joined after 2007 don't have the perk, it appears.) Why NHS consultants many of whom earn more than £100,000 need a guaranteed pension is anybody's guess. Especially when final-salary pensions in the private sector are mere whispers, tales told of legendary times. The argument for defined benefit pensions for public servants used to be that they earned so much less than the private sector jobbie that this was fair recompense in their old age. We have seen that this is a staggering lie.
I can't blame the public servant, of course. If I got a job that assured me of a nice salary and a rollicking pension, security, in fact, for the rest of my life, I might jump at it. Particularly if I lived in some dismal part of the Midlands, say, where, for entertainment, all I could do was throw stones at passing trains. I lay the blame entirely on Labour, even as I doff my hat to their chutzpah. They have fucked the United Kingdom well and proper, and left its people so in thrall to them that I cannot see them ever bowing out of power.
Someone please tell me I'm wrong, and there's a way out of this hellish morass.
Of what speak I? Why, Albion's perfidious government. In what has to be the grandest gerrymandering achievement ever, Labour has managed to create a vast class of people so utterly beholden to them that it is unimaginable for these folks to vote for anyone else. And who are these sheep? Why, public servants in all their disguises.
It is absolutely breath-taking. During the 10-odd years of Britain's economic boom, a period that our man Gordon Brown attributed entirely to his own skill (further embellished by his 'no more boom and bust' speeches), which part of the workforce added more jobs? You guessed it - the public sector. Between 1998 and 2007, of the 1.2 million jobs added in urban UK, two-thirds (two-thirds!) were in some bureaucracy or the other. In some parts of the UK, state employees are 70% of the workforce. We might as well be living in the USSR.
And what sorts of jobs are these? Not all necessary ones, of course, like teachers or police or nurses. Oh no. There were new metrics established that determined the efficacy of teachers and nurses and policemen. Who would monitor these metrics? The newly employed 'managers', of course. And watchers-to-watch-watchers in some surreal exponential series of artificial jobs.
To attract suitable talent from the private sector, massive salaries were offered to such worthies as heads of the various municipal authorities. Many of them were paid more than the Prime Minister, even.
Meanwhile, to fund all these pen-pushers and layabouts and non-jobs, the Treasury under Labour issued billions of sterling in debt, so that when they really should have been paying down the deficit, they instead caused it to swell to gargantuan proportions. When the crash occurred in 2007-2008, obviously the fiscal situation then took a further plunge into the abyss.
Of course, the joke, dismal as it is, doesn't end there. It turns out that these leeches on the body politic actually - in the median - earn more (£539 per week) than the private sector employee (£465).
In what universe is this sustainable? The private sector pays for most of this largesse in the form of tax. The state has continued to grow and grow. This makes eminent sense during a recession. But it made no sense at all during the years of growth.
Meanwhile, there are still more benefits to a public sector job. No matter what you earn, you are guaranteed a nice final-salary pension when you retire. (Civil servants who joined after 2007 don't have the perk, it appears.) Why NHS consultants many of whom earn more than £100,000 need a guaranteed pension is anybody's guess. Especially when final-salary pensions in the private sector are mere whispers, tales told of legendary times. The argument for defined benefit pensions for public servants used to be that they earned so much less than the private sector jobbie that this was fair recompense in their old age. We have seen that this is a staggering lie.
I can't blame the public servant, of course. If I got a job that assured me of a nice salary and a rollicking pension, security, in fact, for the rest of my life, I might jump at it. Particularly if I lived in some dismal part of the Midlands, say, where, for entertainment, all I could do was throw stones at passing trains. I lay the blame entirely on Labour, even as I doff my hat to their chutzpah. They have fucked the United Kingdom well and proper, and left its people so in thrall to them that I cannot see them ever bowing out of power.
Someone please tell me I'm wrong, and there's a way out of this hellish morass.
. A collection of wryly loving descriptions of everything edible - from aardvark to zucchini - this book is probably one of the great works in the English language.
