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EXPRESS COMMENT

THE BROWN TAX AND SPEND ERA COMES CRASHING DOWN

Wednesday May 28,2008

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THE British economy has reached a fork in the road.

A decade of benign global economic conditions has come to an end. It is no longer possible for huge extra sums to be taken in taxes without living standards falling sharply.

Fuel and food prices are soaring and the only way to protect people’s prosperity is for the State to become much more efficient and much less expensive.

The rise in the fortunes of the Conservative Party has coincided with it once more embracing a tax-cutting agenda.

Equally, the collapse in the Government’s standing is mainly a result of its determination to tax hardworking people until the pips squeak despite overwhelming evidence that extra state spending is not the answer to the nation’s entrenched social problems.

Even within the Labour Party, some are beginning to get the message. As the first major fuel protests for eight years hit London, Bradford and Cardiff yesterday, a number of Labour MPs called for lower taxes on motoring.

And, in a devastating analysis of public sector failings, former minister Denis MacShane urged his party to cut taxes and spending by scrapping pointless initiatives.

When even elements within the Labour Party feel compelled to admit that the limits of acceptable public spending have been passed and that the State is wasting money on an epic scale, those who have long been making the case for tax cuts will detect the heady scent of victory.

Further rises in taxes and public expenditure will lead only to penury and it is becoming increasingly clear that the British people will not be dragged down that path.

The road less travelled – the one leading to a smaller State which does fewer things better – is, at long last, going to prevail. Politicians who understand this will prosper. Those who do not, such as Gordon Brown, will be swept away.

They will not be missed.

THE BROWN TAX AND SPEND ERA COMES CRASHING DOWN

29.05.08, 9:48pm

I detest this man with a passion. The fact that it's all unraveling for him, at such an alarming rate, is sweet revenge indeed. Only problem, is that he's hell bent on dragging us all down with him.

• Posted by: BoggyDepot • Report Comment

THE OIL CRISIS IS NOT THE PROBLEM BUT A POLITICAL MINDSET THAT IS FIXED IN THE PAST

29.05.08, 2:40pm

With the oil crisis now gathering speed, it is no wonder that our western politicians cannot get their heads around how to deal with it effectively. Unfortunately for them they never really understood, although scientists have done so since the mid of the last century, that oil et al had to be substituted via the introduction of new alternative non-oil technologies. Unfortunately politicians do not understand also in the West that even if a new technology is invented within the laboratory it takes at least a further 3-decades for it to feed through into the global marketplace due to uptake, supply and distribution. Therefore nothing of any major significance will really happen in the substitute of oil technologies for at least a further 20 years or more. The reason, our politicians have been too slow to take up the challenge and where their advisers have greatly ill advised them in the past.

But this is not the case in the Asian economies where I see the major breakthroughs of the future coming from. I say this, as Asia is becoming by the year the more dynamic of the world’s regions. Just one pointer to this is the eventual completion of the near 150,000 Kilometer (5 times around the world in equivalent distance) trans-Asian highway which will link China, central Asia, India, Iran, the Middle East, Russia and Europe together in a single global market - eventually 4/5ths of world trade. Europe when the TAH is fully completed being the smaller cousin in the group by that time unfortunately.

When this modern day ‘silk road’ is achieved, all major trade will be concentrated in the East and where the USA will be isolated, not just by thousands of miles of Oceans both ways, but also by not being in the area where all the action is taking place. We in Britain will also be out on a limb and far from where the eventual centre of world trade will reside. But I state all these matters with no satisfaction whatsoever as I have grandchildren like many more in this country and see the great hardship emerging without relent year-on-year. Therefore it is hoped that our astute politicians in the West eventually realise that only by creating the technologies of the future, that no one else has, will our future generations stand any chance at all of a reasonable life. For as I have said, it takes many decades to bring new technology to market and by that time our resources in both financial and human terms will have also diminished considerably to take up the new challenge. Therefore the urgency to move now to an economic strategy that will only work in the future and before we have a far graver situation than the growing oil crisis that is now with us and until the last drop of black gold is extracted from our planet.

Dr David Hill
World Innovation Foundation Charity
Bern, Switzerland

• Posted by: davidhill • Report Comment