Wednesday, July 28, 2010

The Government: three months on

I am sure I am not the only one who is thinking "same old Tories". Welcome to the wonderful world of slash and burn politics this year get over 25% off democracy. In my defence I only voted for the liberal democrats and although I have never voted tactically before, in the next election I am voting for whoever has the best chance of getting the Tories out. The only thing that the Tories have not yet mentioned is privatisation, but I am sure they are working on a plan somewhere.

Are you all looking forward to the double dip recession, no it is not a new flavour of coalition ice cream but its the roller coaster ahead for us on the economy.

According to David Cameron its all about the big society and communities joining together and they know best how to solve problems. Its beginning to feel like a more bullish American style of politics talking about big society and small government.

Lets take speed cameras which is a nice example of a slash and burn policy that is going to backfire. The government has cut funding for all the road safety partnerships who operate the speed cameras. The Road safety partnerships have basically folded as they cant generate money from tickets, wont get any more from the government and frankly the partners have better things to spend their very limited money on. So the cameras are switched off and that's that right?

Well no, first there is the road safety issue, at least some of these cameras were protecting junctions and schools making people slow down. Now they are gone the collisions will be at higher speeds and inevitably people will be seriously injured or in extreme cases will be killed. I hope anyone that has an accident at a junction/ or road previously covered by a speed camera sues the government for negligence. How ever much you hate speed cameras, speed kills and if people know they aren't going to be caught they will speed even more. Many already do even with speed cameras The outcome will be that accidents / deaths will increase and insurance premiums will go up.

The government in their infinite wisdom have cut funding for something that pays for itself and then some. All the money from speeding tickets goes back into government funds. So funds cut, cameras shut, income cut, more cuts needed. So rather than save money the government will now have to make up the shortfall from a falling speeding ticket income elsewhere, either cutting more services or raising taxes. Please can someone explain to me how this policy makes sense.

Plus if like me you keep to the speed limits you now have to pay for something which previously you could have avoided. Avoidance taxes are great because if you don't have the money or don't want to pay you can avoid it. If as a result of a drop in income from speeding tickets they have to raise income tax I can no longer avoid it.

Come back labour all is forgiven, Gordon Brown was kind of alright really...

I wont even go on about the bank profits...

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