Osborne's Paradoxes
Thomas Jones
Three paradoxes that leap out from a quick reading of the executive summary of the Spending Review:
1. War is Peace: ‘Last year, Britain’s deficit was the largest in its peacetime history'; 'The Spending Review fully funds Britain’s operations in Afghanistan.’
2. The Magic of Accountability without Regulation: the proposed public service reforms will involve both ‘cutting burdens and regulations on frontline staff’ and ‘improving the transparency, efficiency and accountability of public services’.
3. Less Money = More Power: ‘These priorities are underpinned by radical reform of public services... shifting power away from central government to the local level.' Central government contributions to local government are set to decline by 26 per cent over the next four years; local government spending will drop by 14 per cent. (Yes, to the Tories 'the local level' means 'the Big Society' not local government, but that doesn't make any sense either.)
Comments
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20 October 2010
at
2:41pm
Jason Kennedy
says:
Brilliant:
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20 October 2010
at
10:43pm
Phil Edwards
says:
@
Jason Kennedy
Yes - I even missed it on first reading. Welcome to peacetime!
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21 October 2010
at
1:45am
pinhut
says:
@
Phil Edwards
One for the ages, certainly.
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21 October 2010
at
9:25am
They will have more freedom in how they spend less?
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20 October 2010
at
11:31pm
Oliver Rivers
says:
The term Orwellian really does, for once, apply: War is Peace.
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21 October 2010
at
1:37am
pinhut
says:
@
Oliver Rivers
On the subject of peace, apologies for my part in our previous exchange.
Read more‘Last year, Britain’s deficit was the largest in its peacetime history’
That's an astonishing catch. One interpretation might be that it indicates the level at which 'the war' is something to be consumed by the public, rather than something genuinely construed as war within the heart of the state.
It also begs the question, how does a war that, on one level, is not happening, ever conclude?
Not sure about the third one, though. If central government provides 74% of what it used to and local government 86%, the balance between them has shifted - whether it's from 50:50 to 46:54, from 9:3 to 8:3 or from 2:6 to 2:7.
And how many pages apart were the two references? (p6, p10).
Number 3, I'm with Phil, I don't see the paradox you are getting at. It could be true, in the sense that the radical reform is the actual handing over of power itself. No?
Freedom should really be rendered as 'discretion' then, but they want to have the word 'freedom' in there for its more positive connotations.