Life, World, News, Weeks

You live in New York. You’re Mexican, Puerto Rican, Japanese, Greek, Bronx. You live in an apartment above your life and work. You work in the piano store downstairs. You help out at the church down there. You head out into the city for the rest: chef, security, dentist... Your apartment block kind of looks a bit like the Led Zeppelin cover one. The windows look out to Park Avenue. Metro-North’s outside on elevated tracks. Wednesday morning sees you there. Home working. Day off. Between shifts. Biding your time. Hazy, muted sunlight. That smell last night. Gas explosion. Two buildings disappear in under two minutes. Compacted from five storeys to just over one. Eight of you are dead in the rubble.

It’s hard to know how to live, or to lose the feeling that there must actually be a certain way. Are you getting it right? Do you know how to do it, or at least enough of it? News and changes, external and personal, buffet you and disturb all those thoughts time and time again. Am I out of touch with things? Am I advanced or retarded in developing in life? Will I ever go there? Get to that?

“If you're not a liberal when you're 25, you have no heart. If you're not a conservative by the time you're 35, you have no brain.”

With age comes conservatism or not, George Osborne’s pro pensioner budget came last Wednesday. And ‘If you’re a maker, a doer or a saver: this Budget is for you,’ he said. The ideological championing of ‘makers and doers’ brought to mind Tony Benn, who had died the previous Friday. From November 1990:

“[…] Despite the fact we’ve been told we’re an entrepreneurial society, this is a country today that has an utter contempt for skill. You talk to people who dig coal, run trains, doctors, nurses, dentists, toolmakers – nobody in Britain is interested in them. The whole of this so-called entrepreneurial society has focused on the City news we get in every bulletin, telling us what’s happened to the pound sterling to three points of decimals against the basket of European currency. Skill is what built this country's strength, and it is treated with contempt. I must confess the auctioning off of public assets, particularly the latest disgusting Frankenstein advertisements that told me more about the mentality of the Minister who devised the scheme than it did about the sale itself, these are assets built up by the labour of those who work in electricity and by the taxpayer who put the equipment in, now to be auctioned off at half their price to make a profit for a tax cut for the rich before the next election comes.”

Sad thing about Tony Benn dying is the fairly intangible position of him. Passionate, uncompromising ideals, eloquent… What did he do, in neat bullet points? Why does ‘everyone’ smile at the mention of him? Pub conversation about Benn once resulted in: “his heart has always been in the right place, if not his brain.” This is probably the thing to remember when reading HYS sections fighting between ‘an inspiration to me from my teens onward’ and ‘he destroyed industry in the ‘70s and was rubbish in every government post he held.’

Conscience. Simple expressive articulation of thoughts honed by getting and staying involved in society, by reading the theories and the studies, and by passion for beliefs and pride in what works. ‘You can change your government with a pencil.’ Every reminder of Benn was a reminder to bother being a part of society. To pay attention, learn and think, and for god’s sake help.

On 22^nd March a 15-year-old girl called Shereka Marsh who had nothing to do with gangs was shot in the neck and killed at her boyfriend’s house in Hackney. She’d just given him a pair of Nike Air Force 1s as a 15^th birthday present. She lived with her mother. Her father lives in Jamaica. She took the Jamaican High Commissioner round her school the week previous. Then on Saturday some of/someone in the group was playing with a gun and.

Accounts on indiscriminating databases – the girl still exists on Twitter. The day before she died: ‘I don't understand the concept of life.’

Two years ago on Radio 3 polymath Raymond Tallis explained a passion (Wagner): “[…] we’re the only creatures who know we’re going to die. So we have the sense of finitude that runs through the whole of our life. So we know there’s the threat of all meanings to be cancelled at any time. And so we long to find a meaning that will somehow resist death. A meaning that will bring all the little tributaries of meaning together at one point of un-gainsay-able significance.”

Trying to find something to leave behind, or that is more powerful to think about than the time you will take to live. Perhaps continuing to continue to pretend that your life will never end. Maybe that’s stronger in youth when there’s so much unprecedented stuff on its way to you. Though you keep hold of a feeling that there’s a reserved place for yourself decades up ahead.

“The finding means that in little more than a century, humanity has figured out not only the age of the universe—it was born about 13.82 billion years ago in the Big Bang—but also how its birth unfolded.”

The ‘smoking gun’ to confirm the Big Bang theory turned up on the 17^th, by the way (puns and metaphors). Residual heat from the origin of the universe has in it a preserved pattern of gravitational waves: this almost certainly proves that there was massive exponential expansion within the “first millionth of a trillionth of a trillionth of a second of the existence of the universe.” We’re talking a growth in that time to something bigger than the perceivable universe (92 billion light-years across).

An even more mind-boggling astral transition from an impossible, understated before to an impossible, all-encompassing after is the first kiss. Clothing ad or no, as an illustration of an experience some of the details still catch you (mostly the pre-kiss mumbling).

FIRST KISS from Tatia Pilieva on Vimeo.

The best thing about cynical shit is that it reminds you how powerful your own genuine feelings are. You’ll have those for the rest of your life and you’ll give them to people for the rest of your life.

“As they helped him out, Mr. McPherson begged his rescuers to leave him and find his wife, please find his wife. But she died.”

The Washington state mudslide of the 22^nd. Nearly 11:00 a.m. there, and “the Oso landslide brought down something like three times the volume of mud as there is concrete in Hoover Dam in one momentous cascade, creating a one-square-mile path of destruction.” Mr McPherson and his wife, Gary and Linda, had clocked up over 40 years together. The number of dead currently stands at 25, with 90 still missing.

“I stress that I don’t wish to be flip about the position of the loved ones and people who know people who are on the flight, but it is in some ways exciting to us.”

Still missing: plane. MH370’s had daily media updates since 8^th March. By Monday it had to have crashed in the sea, but the search goes on. Angry families attack the spokespersons. Grief in all shapes and sizes. The media include these particular details without much comment or judgement. It’s implicit that the chaotic consequences of emotions and mourning are collectively understood. The way animals look when they watch each other grieve.

Radio 4’s meta- ‘coverage of the coverage’ on Saturday saw Will Self questioned on the appeal of the story at existential level.

“[…] Nowadays everywhere we go is monitored and particularly air flight. Since 9/11 the level of security in the sense in which air flights are determined experiences – we go from A to B, everything is closely monitored – has become very much part of our consciousness about movement. And that’s why the idea of the lost flight is so potent. It presents us with this idea that, you know, maybe we could go anywhere. After all, there isn’t a destination in the world at the moment that doesn’t seem to already bear the impress of a human foot. If you go to the South Pole you’ll very likely to run into the back of Prince Harry, who’s sort of manhauling his way there.”

Taking this element of the plane story as proof of genuine uncertainty in the world – where things can be not known or predicted – uncertainty in your life, where it isn’t distressing you, is a kind of freedom. Freedom from experience, from a course or from being steered, from precedent, from the sense that everything everywhere is charted and predetermined, leaves: well, what do I do? Sadly, beyond the cost-free beauty of trying/thinking/seeing something as genuinely different and spontaneous and unpremeditated in your life as you can, what you do rather depends on…

“The UK’s five richest families have accumulated more wealth than the whole of the bottom 20 per cent of the population […] The handful of billionaires – which includes property investor Charles Cadogan and Sports Direct boss Michael Ashley – have amassed a combined wealth of £28.2bn, more than the poorest 12.6 million people in Britain, according to Oxfam.” That’s the Independent on an Oxfam report from 17^th March.

So where to go, then? In or out of Ukraine? In or out of Europe? Well, everywhere and anywhere, daily – sometimes without getting out of your chair. Pay attention, do your bit. Let everything rolling out in front of you help you to think. The longest and the shortest days of your life should tell you just how long and short your life will be, whatever happens. Getting out of breath’s good.

Oh, and the nice supply teacher from Glee has separated from her husband in real life.

Davos Cameron

‘The World Economic Forum is an independent international organization committed to improving the state of the world by engaging business, political, academic and other leaders of society to shape global, regional and industry agendas’ …or something like that. It’s been running since 1971, and has an annual meeting at Davos in Switzerland - a meeting that David Cameron attended this year, his first attendance as prime minister.

In this capacity Cameron authoritatively mentioned the budget for growth that the government will be announcing in about eight weeks: ‘Those who argue that dealing with our deficit and promoting growth are somehow alternatives are wrong. You cannot put off the first in order to promote the second. Average government debt in the EU is almost eighty per cent of GDP.’ The nice thing about giving a speech is that you can put words into your hypothetical enemies’ mouths, and make those words much easier for yourself to knock down than in real life. What about those who aren’t actually arguing that tackling the deficit and promoting growth are alternatives, but suggest instead that they can solve each other – promoting growth to deal with the deficit?

The coalition’s method is to focus first on reducing the deficit, hopefully with the least amount of damage done to the potential for growth. Of course, while pitching for business interest at Davos it was growth that needed to be sold, rather than deficit reduction. Cameron’s sentences thus came out with the emphasis reversed. His government would prioritise growth through its choice of cuts - welfare is cut to pay for transport, and tax increases focus on what people spend, rather than hiking taxes on jobs. As for Europe, we should all cut back on regulations to small businesses: our entrepreneurs, our lifeblood.

Carefully deployed oxymorons-that-aren’t: budgets for growth, cutting back to invest in innovation – it’s not that Cameron’s saying every cloud has a silver lining, but rather he’s having every cloud labelled: ‘silver lining holder.’ It’s pruning a shrub so that it might grow more vigorously in the next season. Yes, a gardening metaphor for politics and the economy – Chauncey Gardiner and Being There. It’s the same thing: vacant man spouts political nous. Everything has its season, after the winter comes the spring. It’s tough but it will get better. Yes, thanks Dave.

Nick Clegg was in Switzerland too. While Cameron gave the Forum deep cuts, Clegg’s cuts were measured: ‘I understand that people, psychologically, when they hear about it, think it's already happened. The vast majority of cuts haven't been introduced yet... They will be imposed gradually over a four-and-a-half-year period.’ It was all about defending the cuts, and ensuring that we all know how confident the coalition is about sticking to them, and to their economic policy in general. On the Friday Chancellor George Osborne told the Forum that we must ignore the ‘siren voices’ urging against the cuts. This is the same phrase he used about a year ago at the Mais lecture at the Cass Business School, City University London. This at least proves that both Osborne and the sirens have been consistent up to now. Coupled with the cuts is an easing of the tax burden on businesses, or rather a promise to achieve the ‘lowest rates of business taxes in the western world.’ Inspiring stuff, though bare in mind Osborne’s audience at Davos.

The World Economic Forum affirms business, tells it that it does a good job, and that, in doing a more profitable, efficient job for itself, our respective populations will be better off materially and otherwise. Those speaking who are in politics are trying to sell their country’s attractiveness to international leaders in business and finance. Obviously the meeting was slightly more interesting this year because the pep talk and inspiring pro-business sound bites had to be reconciled with the ‘it’s a choppy road to recovery’ and ‘we can’t let bankers off the hook for this mess completely’ policy admissions of each country’s spokespersons. Cameron and Osborne confidently offered several explanations as to how the coalition’s cuts wouldn’t affect new investments or opportunities for business - those routes to successful and safer economies and societies.

This meant addressing the recent news-making finding that the economy contracted by 0.5% in the last three months of 2010. The bad weather was cited; it was the wrong type of Christmas shopper (pansies who stay indoors when it snows), and the recovery was always going to be choppy, as the prime mister said. If the downturn continues, however, the deficit reduction plan might be tweaked slightly, what former George Osborne advisor Ken Rogoff calls a ‘slower plan A.’ Channel 4 News’s Faisal Islam noted that. He interviewed Osborne at Davos on Friday, and pointed out that ‘Osborne is also a bit of an Austerity Pin-up for many Americans here who feel that the US government is not getting to grip with its ballooning deficit.’

In the great gamble on who’s in the right over tackling the economic situation those Americans may well be vindicated in their opinion of Osborne. For the moment, however, the British media use a different view of America to contrast with the coalition’s policies. The US government’s perceived reticence to cut, along with America’s superior growth figures for the close of 2010 prove too tempting to ignore. This from BBC journalist Olivia Lang’s live feed from the Forum on Friday (Lang had just wondered if Cameron’s confidence had rubbed off on US Treasury Secretary Tim Geithner): ‘1100: But that's perhaps all he's picking up from Cameron. Making deep cuts in spending, Geithner says, "is not the responsible way" to bring down state deficits.’ Ooh, burn.

Whether or not Cameron, Clegg and Osborne did us proud at Davos remains to be seen. Actually, does anyone really care? Does it matter if our prime minister, deputy prime minister and Chancellor succeed or fail in apologising convincingly enough to the banks (for coming down so hard on them, in regulation and rhetoric, for their part in the economic downturn)? Did they really convince as to how humble and sorry we are for biting the hands that feed and drop us a few crumbs in the process? Did the message get across - that this tough economic climate and jobs market will be that much easier to bear if we know that banks and business are interested in coming to our country in droves, or more likely in unimaginative flat-pack office developments?

I’m sure business is capable of deciding for itself, without any governmental sales pitch, which countries to use or ditch in its operations.

Away from the banks, business and Bono crowd, the World Social Forum’s alternative, alter-globalisation discussions and answers will be heard in February, at Dakar.

Bunnies can and will eat humble pie

#99048614 / gettyimages.com

I often think it's comical How nature always does contrive That every boy and every gal That's born into the world alive Is either a little liberal Or else a little conservative

Gilbert and Sullivan, ‘When all night long a chap remains,’ Iolanthe, 1882

We are two weeks into our coalition government, and it is very refreshing; the weather is scorching, the children are playing and the Dailies are printing pro-government cartoons again (“If Cameron says ‘I told you so’ one more time…” say the cartoon European leaders on a sinking 1 euro coin. Sunday Express, 23^rd May). The coalition’s Programme for Government came out last week, and yesterday our new Chancellor George Osborne faced his albatross of debt, introducing the cuts to be made across government. Finally, the Queen opened the new session of parliament today, and made her speech outlining the government’s plans.

The sun is not quite shining out of the backsides of our new government, but equally they have yet to be compared with the stuff that more commonly comes out of that area. The coalition seems to be a corrective government at present, with the country set to make its difficult recovery under their careful helm. But to get here required a fascinating, if dismally reported, mess of politics and base level human behaviour.

I was genuinely intrigued about the uncertain consequences for our country’s government, now that the most recent batch of traditional ‘bad as each other’ complaints about the main parties had resulted in nobody winning hearts and minds at the election. Instead of exploring this, I had to watch election night coverage that was poised to examine the swings, clearly refusing to allow the already mooted hung parliament to deter the normal practice of analysing patterns.

Irrelevance isn’t irredeemable though. Channel 4’s Alternative Election Night might not have offered the satirized results coverage I had hoped for, but the BBC rose to the challenge with its wonderful, self-parodying boat party. The satire was so spot on that some viewers complained, imagining that the banter barge was a genuine segment of the Election 2010 programming. Bruce Forsyth’s offering was so so bad, it’s funny that it appeared on the next day’s Have I Got News For You (but not, it seems, the clip of Ian Hislop, well into the early hours, with his hair looking pwned.)

Channel 4’s show had some excellent Charlie Brooker comments, ‘Gordon Brown played by a haunted elephant’ for one, but the programme had much more of Jimmy Carr (admittedly I chuckled at something he added to a point about Geoff Hoon: ‘And traditionally voters have been put off by total fucking cunts’). As it turned out, much of the programme’s political humour was kept to laboured one-liners, all with about as much political savvy as a balding toothbrush.

In fairness, political savvy wasn’t abounding that night. The BBC’s Nick Robinson valiantly forwent sleep to do what he always does - telling us what the party leaders were likely to be doing, and likely to be thinking about while they might be doing it. He noted how interesting it was that Peter Mandelson had chosen that particular word in the interview we’d just seen - perhaps it meant that something Nick had surmised earlier might possibly have been likely at some point after all.

The BBC’s trump cards were actually Peter Hennessey and Vernon Bogdanor, historian and professor of government respectively (David Cameron is a former student of Bogdanor’s). They added more detail - and qualifiers - to the oft-touted precedents for this election: hung Parliament in 1974, and what Ted Heath/Jeremy Thorpe/Harold Wilson were doing at the equivalent of this moment back then. David Dimbleby was wry in places, clearly nonplussed by what his earpiece was telling him to announce: ‘oh look, Nick Clegg’s Leylandii,’ ‘and we’ve got to cut to another shot of David Cameron’s car going along the motorway.’

The night was a void in both politics and political coverage. A media that over-analyses the parties’ daily doings - and the electorate’s opinions of the same - sets too much store by trends in voter intentions and perceived perceptions of the parties. Neither parties nor media could explain why our votes hadn’t produced a majority. Surely that is more of a real change to the country’s recent politics than any presidential copies, like leaders’ debates or the bottom up, grassroots makeovers that the parties’ upper echelons have only a half-arsed awareness of.

Over the weekend there were official Liberal Democrat-Conservative meetings, and unofficial Liberal Democrat-Labour meetings. Old passageways - the footprints of Henry VIII’s reign and the Palace of Whitehall - afforded discreet exits and entrances from Downing Street via the Cabinet Office, and made for cracking titbits for Radio Four political features. With little else to go on, the media got even more over-imaginative during all of this:

Don't stitch us up, Tory MPs warn Cameron... but Osborne may have to be sacrificed to seal the deal

General election 2010: I'm still expecting a Conservative minority government

The secret of Dimbleby’s 16-hour stint? Honey

The lack of reportable action temporarily broke the regular 24-hour news cycle treatment of politics. The rushed, controversy-seeking news bulletins that normally scrutinize political stories – where party spokespersons have to deny everything that is happening - were replaced by nothing: standby reporters outside on the grass. The key figures - the party leaders and ‘their people’ - could convene out of view, daring the media to find a scandal to report.

After Gordon Brown nearly stood down on the Monday, we had a further 24 hours of the exciting possibility that the four-day stale election outcome was still up in the air. Then all alternatives and speculative combinations were forgotten as Gordon Brown left Downing Street to go to the palace. The cars of Brown and then Cameron were followed around London in bird’s eye view like the earlier generation of GTA games. Cameron goes to see the Queen, some wag takes a picture and iZaps it to the media – much to the dismay/awe of Peter Hennessey (unprecedented look at a meeting no one has ever been privy to), GTA back to Downing Street, speech, off sod, over.

The Independent noted Nick Clegg’s stated surprise at the abruptness of Gordon Brown’s resignation. Aides had apparently described several calls between the two, where Clegg had urged Brown to delay his departure: ‘Eventually, an exasperated Mr Brown told him: ‘Nick, Nick, I can't hold on any longer. I've got to go to the Palace. The country expects me to do that. I can't hold on any longer. Whatever happens, I'm going to the Palace.’ The suggestion is that the Liberal Democrats wanted Labour to hold on to power, because - with Labour still an alternative - the Conservatives would be more obliging to Lib Dem conditions for a coalition. The Indy was keen to point out that Clegg’s current surprise clashes with his previous comments about seeking a deal with the party with the most votes. ‘It would be preposterous for Gordon Brown to end up like some squatter in No 10’, he had said back then.

Juicy stuff, but slightly in competition with all of the current juicy stuff about Liberal and Conservative MPs being upset anyway - because of the compromises already made. Presumably, if Clegg had had Labour as a threatening rival bidder for a bit longer, the Conservatives would have ceded so much – practically turning into Liberals themselves - that call me Dave would have ended up assassinated (and perhaps not just politically) by disenchanted, embittered and deranged party right-wingers. Now we are supposed to be waiting for the coalition government to tear itself apart – watch those backbenchers.

But then David Cameron and (according to Cameron) Nick Clegg can and will eat humble pie over comments said about each other prior to the election. Well why not -it’s easier to be humble when you’re the PM or Deputy PM; you’ve got a far bigger sense of self-worth to endure a denting than lesser beings, whose self-esteem might be rubbed out completely by a similar eating of own words.

Personally, instead of fragmentation I’m waiting for a good, pun-inducing policy hash up, which is surely far more likely. For instance, the coalition’s programme says: ‘We will stop the deportation of asylum seekers who have had to leave particular countries because their sexual orientation or gender identification puts them at proven risk of imprisonment, torture or execution’ [1]. I can already see the stock picture of Dick Emery or Are You Being Served’s Mr. Humphries grinning back at me from the Daily Excess - illustrations for a statistically dubious article about LGBT immigrants camping out in the nation’s beauty spots.

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[1] HM Government, The Coalition: Our programme for government, (London; Cabinet Office, 2010) p.18.

You Swinge if You Want to

Shadow chancellor George Osborne gave a speech at the British Museum today. The Conservatives have heeded the calls to clarify their economic policies after they toned down their public spending cuts a couple of days ago. David Cameron told the BBC that no ‘swingeing cuts’ [the interviewer’s words] would be made in 2010/11, while Osborne had promised early cuts. Really this was just a bad choice of phrase in an interview, with others deciding to soup it up to the level of a Conservative crisis. That doesn’t mean we can’t have a little fun with it though. Certainly something Osborne said the other day is worth picking up on.

Appearing on the BBC's Andrew Marr Show, shadow chancellor George Osborne said "early action" was needed on the deficit to avoid a "Greek-style budget crisis".

He insisted that it would be a "mistake" to wait until next year to begin tackling the "albatross of debt", as the government was planning to do [1].h
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George and the Albatross of Debt

George was a confident, hardworking little boy. He edited and contributed to the school magazine Nigella, named after the Ancient Egyptian domestic goddess. Despite this talent for writing and his outward contentment, he was always looking up to David Cameraman, or Dave the big C for short.

One day George was walking back to the station following his after-school pedestrian practice when he saw an enormous bird perched on a garden wall. This bird did something rather strange upon seeing George; it spoke to him.

‘George. I am the Albatross of Debt, and I bring you…’
‘Wait!’ Said George excitedly, ‘did you just say the Albatross of Debt? Don’t you mean death?’
The albatross let its wings drop to the floor, slapping the pavement with claps of despair. ‘Look child, if I had meant death I would have said death. But I did not. I’m the physical realization of a metaphor for the nation’s economy.’
‘You just look like an albatross. Where’s the debt?’
‘And just what does debt look like exactly?’
George shrugged, he neither knew nor cared; Blue Peter was on in 20 minutes.
‘You can’t see debt because it’s precisely the thing you don’t have, it’s what you owe.’
‘Couldn’t you be like a newspaper cartoon and have a sash with ‘debt’ written on it or something?’
‘Ah, the sash.’ The Albatross thought for a moment. ‘Well, it blew off me when I was flying in. Landed on a guide dog, so now there’s a guide dog of debt walking around too.’
‘Ok. Nice to meet you.’

With the seabird calling after him George hurried off down a back alley, the likes of which he had never seen before (living—as he did—in a house, a very big house in the country). At least the albatross, with its wingspan of 3-3.5 metres, couldn’t follow him too closely now. ‘Oh I wish David Cameraman were here’ George thought to himself. He started; up ahead in the shadows he could see someone in a hoody and tracky b’s (as the stable boy called them). George slowed. He couldn’t go back, and the person was coming towards him now, hands in pockets—well, George hoped they were pockets; they looked closer in than pockets usually are.

‘Aite.’ The voice was familiar to George.
'Dave Cameraman!'
'Give us a hug, blud.'
‘Dave we can’t go on like this…there’s a talking albatross following me.’
David thought to himself for a moment, ‘ah that’s well easy, just cut off its deficit.’
‘Come here and try it you little twat.’ The albatross twittered from above.
‘That’s a deeply offensive word in some parts!’ George rightly pointed out.
‘Is it?’ David looked thoughtful. ‘Don’t you talk to me like that then. I’ll have you know all that rugby put hairs on my chest.’

It turned out that David’s upturned hood was remarkably good at catching a full load of albatross droppings, and so he ran off home to get changed. Suddenly disenchanted with his idol, George decided to sort things out for himself. He looked up at the seabird.

‘Albatross! From the ashes of the debt boom we will build a saving society. I defeat you with a new economic model for growth, with eight benchmarks:

• To cut the deficit more quickly to safeguard Britain's credit rating.
• To create a more balanced economy.
• To get Britain working.
• To make sure that Britain is open for business.
• To ensure that the whole country shares in rising prosperity.
• To reform public services to deliver better value for money.
• To create a safer banking system that serves the needs of the economy.

We see higher emissions than 1997 - and Britain has just 5% of the global market for green goods and services. So our eighth benchmark is to turn both of these things around. [Britain has just 5% of the global market for green goods and services - and we see higher emissions than 1997?]

These are the Benchmarks for Britain. Judge us by these benchmarks. Hold us to account. We will be accountable [2].

The albatross stared down at George, ‘From the ashes of the debt boom we will build a saving society?’ It appeared to be thinking this over for a moment or so before continuing. ‘Are you trying to say that a phoenix is going to rise from the ashes of an albatross?’

‘Oh shut up’ said George. ‘I’m going home to proof read that.’

Ah nightmares, this thing could run on and on if we let it. Free enterprise is looking noble again it seems—less taxation and stuffy regulation of people that would make us richer if only we let them. We should encourage an innovation nation, support rather than strangle our businesses and welcome foreign investors instead of driving them elsewhere to cheaper lands. Bettering that we could all go into business ourselves. If we all aspire the country will get richer as a result of all our individual successes. Mind you, if absolutely everybody aspired to that Alan Sugary dream there wouldn’t be anybody to serve us at the till when we tried to spend our new wealth. Hooray for employees I say, and I hope George Osborne thinks like that too.

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[1] ‘No swingeing cuts in first year, says David Cameron’, BBC, <http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk_politics/8490024.stm> 31^st January 2010

[2] George Osborne, ‘A New Economic Model’, Conservatives, <http://www.conservatives.com/News/Speeches/2010/02/George_Osborne_A_New_Economic_Model.aspx> 2^nd February 2010