10 Reasons UK is not a democracy (summary)

1.       The head of state is not elected.

2.       The second chamber of Parliament that can sponsor, block and amend laws in unelected.

3.       The selection of candidates. The Prime Minister of the UK has, for the last 91 years been either Conservative or Labour. The membership of these two parties in 2014 is less than 1% of the population and it is these members (and often a small sub-set of them) that select parliamentary candidates, therefore our MP’s and governments are not representative.

4.       Manifesto promises can be broken and new policies with no mandate find their way into law.

5.       Party funding, lobbying and corruption. Parties are funded by individuals and organisations with vested interest in certain policies, this is paying for legislation.  Lawmakers can vote on issues where they have a direct financial interest. These are corrupt practises.

6.       Individuals in power represent themselves not the people. 65% of the population believe MPs represent themselves and “feather their own nests”.

7.       First past the post. Our electoral system itself is undemocratic. The party that wins the majority of seats rarely wins the majority of the electorates support.

8.       The “payroll vote” and the Whips. The house of commons is organised in a way that takes away from the constituency MP the right to represent his constituents by either making them members of the government of shadow government guaranteeing party loyalty, or by whipping them to tow the party line regardless of conscience.

9.       Lack of veto. There is no power of recall over an MP who is found to be not representing his/her constituents or for serious misconduct.

10.   Statutory Instruments. These confer on ministers power to make legal orders without further recourse to parliament (other than passing the original act giving them those powers). In this way ministers are given vast power without the checks and balances of scrutiny by the people’s representatives.

Cost of long term unemployed June 2014

If we look at the chart below we see the cost of the long term unemployed against total government spending. The 327,000 people who are unemployed for over 12 months are hardly ruining the country. But the interest on debt which, in large part, was taken out to bail out the bankers is now 7.25% of total spending and 17 times more than the cost of long term unemployed.

Deficit Reduction

Just thought I would put some figures out there on what the coalition continue to say is their top priority, deficit reduction.

When the coalition came to power in 2010 they published the "coalition agreement" that set out their priorities and "balancing the books" was given top billing. Their plan was to reduce UK deficit to zero in one parliament. How are the doing four years in?

Well these are the figures as at Feb 2014.

So as we can see the deficit is reducing but progress is painfully slow and way off the original forecast.

They are now saying that the deficit will be reduced to zero by 2018/19. Do you believe them?

Well looking at the progress towards zero at the current rate that target will not be met. That is why two things have to happen.

1. Growth needs to return in big numbers
2. Spending needs even more cuts

This is why whatever party wins in 2015 we can expect more of the same and we will have at least ten years of misery. Surely there is a better way.

Try this for a start: http://www.centreforwelfarereform.org/library/by-date/basic-income-security.html

2014 year of tough decisions

Why the “tough decisions lie ahead”

It seemed to many that after nearly 4 years of government and all the “austerity” that the statement the chancellor made at the New Year about, the “tough decisions” being for 2014, was surprising but in fact it is true and this is why.

The chart below shows the “structural deficit” that Osborne and Cameron talk about so often, as in “we have reduced the deficit by a third”.

You will notice that the deficit reached 11.2% in 2009/10 (the last year of the last government). It has now reduced (end of 2013) to 7.5%, a fall of 33%. You will also notice that the last two years came in at 7.9% and 7.8%. And of course the lower figures on the right are estimates!

The chart below shows UK GDP over a similar period.

You will notice the massive dip in 2009 which corresponded to the recession caused by the world financial crisis of 2007/8. The figures in the first chart show the structural deficit of a percentage of GDP. So it follows that if government spending and tax income stay relatively static over a period when GDP takes a dip then the difference between the spend and the income expressed as a percentage of GDP will obviously go up.

The chart below shows income and expenditure:

This is in £millions. The thing to notice here is that spending and income is relatively static (allowing for inflation) over the period 2009/10 to 2012/13.

So the question I have is what are the hard decisions the government have taken that have reduced the deficit by a third? The answer of course is none. Just by doing nothing in terms of overall expenditure/income the recovery of GDP inevitable after the biggest post-war recession will itself reduce the deficit.

But doing nothing has had another effect. The chart below shows the national debt.

By failing to deal with the deficit (taking tough decisions) the debt has rocketed and the present government have borrowed more in 3.5 years than the last government did in 13 years.

This is why in his New Year statement of 2014 the chancellor said that the tough decisions lie ahead.

Incidentally the reason I put “austerity” in quotes at the top of this piece is because there really hasn’t been any as can be seen by the spending figures above.

·         The “bedroom tax” has cost more than it saved.
·         The benefit cap has saved a drop in the ocean compared to the overall benefit budget because they were not hundreds of thousands of benefit claimants getting more than £26,000 a year.
·         The savings made by changing from DLA to PIP have been eaten up by the cost of appeals and the cost of ATOS.
·         The money saved by sanctioning thousands of JSA claimants has been taken up by the disaster that is the work programme (A4E, INGUS etc).
·         Savings made by cutting nurses and other front line NHS staff have gone to private sector health providers.

No austerity is really an ideological crusade that has nothing to do with money.