It's pretty frustrating watching Michael Gove announce cuts to the school building programme.
Seven hundred communities will not get the schools they need.
As Andrew Rawnsley in the Observer puts it:
The furore around Michael Gove ought to serve as a caution to his colleagues. It illustrates how easy it is to swagger your machismo as an axeman when you are talking abstract percentages and how hard it is when you have to bring down the blade. It is one thing to type some numbers into a Whitehall spreadsheet and quite another to translate them into real cuts to real services used by real voters.
The turbulence around the education secretary is but a light squall compared to the dark tornadoes of trouble coming over the horizon.
Oh, so true.
But what is worse — none of this is needed. As the Green New Deal has shown now is the time for serious investment — not the time for cuts. Cuts will increase the size of the government deficit. Investment would reduce it.
Yes I know that sounds perverse, but remember first at last one Nobel laureate agrees and second, we’re talking about a country here, not a company or a household. Countries are very different beasts — and basically work the opposite way to companies and households. So if a company sacks someone the cost has gone away. If a country sacks someone the problem is still there, but now it’s not doing anything useful to pay its way. And that makes them more costly than when they ere employed.
Confusing? Maybe. But right, all the same. And that’s why the ConDems are going to be offering trauma for no good reason at all. Unless William Keegan is right when he wrote today confirming another argument I have presented here — which he summarises as follows:
Now, I have never been a believer in the politics of envy, but it seems to me that, from the insouciant way they are going about the cuts, and the savagery of their approach to the public sector, the coalition is in danger of reviving an old-fashioned class war.
I have no doubt: the only explanation for this is class war, but by those with privilege on the rest.
And that makes it particularly sickening.
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“Now, I have never been a believer in the politics of envy, but it seems to me that, from the insouciant way they are going about the cuts, and the savagery of their approach to the public sector, the coalition is in danger of reviving an old-fashioned class war.”
One might just as easily say the same thing about a government that budgets fora deficit equal to 15% of GDP or 30% of government spending. Of course, Gove isn’t cutting any spending for ever, he is merely deferring it until the re is room for it in the budget and is cutting back on some of the more profligate spending.
Not reviving the Class war, as Warren Buffett said:
“There’s class warfare, all right,” Mr. Buffett said, “but it’s my class, the rich class, that’s making war, and we’re winning.”
The ‘politics of envy’ stuff is a ruse to conflate a humane sense of injustice with envy, the 6th deadly sin.
@paul
Absolutely
@Alex
Lying really does not become you
No Labour government budgeted a deficit equal to 14% of GDP by choice
The failure of banks forced that situation upon them
That was a market failure
And you persistently lie about it
It really does not become you
yeah, you don’t hear much about the politics of avarice or gluttony
Alex:
Not so long ago, household were encouraged to run deficits of around 300% of income on house purchases.
What the lenders were concerned about was the ability to pay them for this deficit, not the size of it.
The size of the deficit is irrelevant, what you pay for it is relevant. Governments have far more control over their credit and their income than a household, though whether they use them is an ideological decision.
Tut, tut, Richard. Accussing others of lyying does not become you either.
The simple facts are that Britain suffered the same economic/banking crisis as the rest of the world, but incurred a substantially higher deficit.
You constantly talk up the merits of a Keynesian remedy, yet claim that the UK government had no choice, which they clearly did, yet they continued to increase spending at 6-8% when tax revenues were flat. The last government spent money wastefully from 2003 in the expectation that splashing a lot of money around would drive the private sector. It didn’t work.
The “savage cuts” to be imposed by the Conservatives are simply reductions in future spending, but are still higher than the spending in prior years.
@Alex
I wasn’t accusing
I was stating
And of course we had a bigger deficit
You might have noticed we are also the biggest financial centre ion relative term sin the world – and yes – I do blame G Brown for that
But that does not change the fact that you are saying something blatantly untrue – that Labour planned for this. They did not
So are you apologising?
@Richard Murphy
Did I say the Labour government “planned” a 15% deficit? I don’t think so.
What I will state is that the last government deliberately espoused a policy of profligate spending in the knowledge that when their successors took the prudent step of reducing spending to levels consistent with tax revenues the later government would be attacked for doing so. To that extent the Labour government was clearly factional and willing to act in its own factional interest at the expense of the country as a whole.
hmm – the cuts are to the modernisation program rather than to new schools. My eldest is about to move to year 7 – and he has a place at a local community school with an excellent reputation. they have a rebuilding programme that will probably be axed. Perhaps that is a shame, but on the other hand they will contiune to exist, and the reputation will continue – which is based on much more than the buildings they are housed in.
Alex
Talking of profilgate spending: how come Gove can afford free schools and an expolsion in academies but not the BSF commitments? The spending is still going on but for niche middle class projects and not the wider state.
Do you think this is going to drive the private sector? Construction companies still struggling to recover from the recession will be devastated by this loss. That means a lot of working classes out of work. Again.
The law might benefit though, with all the breach of contract claims and JR applications. Which the taxpayer will pay for if successful.
You may be right though about spending in years prior to 2003. Those years when the Tories refused to invest allowing the state funded schools to fall into such decline.
What do you think the lasting effect of these current spending policies will be?
@Jacquie Martin
“Talking of profilgate spending: how come Gove can afford free schools
and an expolsion in academies but not the BSF commitments?”
Jacquie, I admit I don’t know all the details, but my assumption is that Gove is not planning to build the free schools at the moment because he says that the earliest could open in 2011, which implies to me that the schools will lease existing sites. That is not inconceivable because that has happened widely in the private sector, but since I don’t know the details of any proposed schemes I can’t comment. In theory this doesn’t create any additional demand above what would have arisen without free schools because there has been a rise in the birth rate and there be demand for more schools all over the country.
With regard to the BSF commitments, all I can say is that I have been staggered by some of the costs involved. A few years ago, the village a few miles south of here had large extension built on to the local primary school, primarily a hall of wood steel and glass construction and a kitchen to cater for 100 children. The cost to the tax payer was £2,000,000.
Only a few years before that the village a few miles to the north used their own initiative and fundraising to pay for a new village hall, slightly larger than the school hall and with a stage, plus adjoining rooms, and a kitchen to cater for 100, all built out of brick and a very fine structure it is too. The cost to the village : £250,000.
The projects were not identical, but the relative costs suggest that the tax payer may have not achieved the best value for money, to put it mildly, and I don’t think this sort of story is uncommon.
@Alex
Very politely this is hearsay misinformation
You’e good at that sort of nonsense which is why I have deleted other comments you have made
This nonsense adds nothing to debate
It’s also utterly inconsistent with my experience as a school governor
@Alex
There is still a large element of capital funding both for free schools and new academies. He is claiming we can’t continue with BSF for the state sector because of lack of money but is then allocating money for selected independent schools. Also, it’s very noticeable that academies that were included in the BSF are still going ahead. Why if there is no money?
I’m not aware of any significant birth rate rise. What is your source and what are the figures involved, please?
In connection with the last point, free schools and academies don’t just take anyone. If there is more demand, then surely that is reason to continue with the BSF project which accommodates all pupils.