The Quiet Man. He touched your life today, all of you, though you may not have noticed. He is ignored, today, as he is every day. Ignored by the public, ignored by the politicians, ignored by the unions.
The Prime Minister didn’t fly to Afghanistan to check on the quality of his Christmas dinner. The Chancellor of the Exchequer didn’t address him at the annual Mansion House Ball. The Leader of the Opposition didn’t rail that he was ‘slipping further into poverty’. The Union leaders didn’t stop essential services because his pension wasn’t as good as he had been led to believe. He had neither been stabbed, nor had he stabbed anyone, so Sky didn’t want to film him. He isn’t believed to be the cause of any cancer, so the Daily Mail omitted to mention him. He isn’t a ‘public servant’ so he wasn’t enjoying a public holiday. He isn’t even a ‘vile banker’, so the Archbishop of Canterbury didn’t give him a mention. He wasn’t lauded for being part of our essential services, ‘nobly’ manning the police stations and ambulance stations on this day of rest. He certainly wasn’t out shopping.
The 6.03 from Penge ran as normal this morning, the rail employees enjoying an extra bonus for taking the train down the line – they may not have realised why. They did so because the Quiet Man needed to get to work, the country needed him to get to work.
The Quiet Man had made himself coffee at 5am this morning, he had wrapped up warmly and walked to the station; he had scrapped the ice off his car and driven off in the morning fog; he had jumped on his motor bike and careered off down icy roads. When he arrived, he’d opened up icy store rooms, turned on the heaters, warmed towels, separated icy cold slices of bacon, rearranged cars that refused to start, fired up computers.
The Quiet Man is part of the great army of self employed. He’s the personal trainer who borrowed against his house to turn that disused shop into your gym. He’s the hairdresser who will do your wife’s hair today. He’s the independent travel agent that is praying you can still afford a holiday this year. He runs your local corner shop; he’s the greengrocer who will restock your fridge after the holiday. He’s the man who runs the ‘greasy spoon’. He runs that little garage that always manages to fit you in when your car breaks down. He’s the computer software engineer that was made redundant and discovered that he could earn a crust writing software for the man who tests the catalytic converter in your car. He’s the mini cab driver who collected you for work this morning. He’s all manner of things.
In a month’s time he will fill in his on-line tax return, and send off a check for his tax bill. The government will let him keep just over half of what he has earned to keep his wife and children – the other half they will take to keep other men’s wives and children in the manner to which they are ‘entitled’. If he doesn’t he will be fined £100 for every day he is late – even if he has earned nothing. No top level negotiations over lunch for him. Just a cold reminder. He must do his bit for the country.
The Prime Minister can’t be bothered to talk to him. He’ll talk to journalists, he’ll address the bankers, he’ll talk to the fashionable ‘Mumsnet’, he’ll talk to European leaders. Will he face the cameras and address the Quiet Man directly? Will he explain what is happening to the country, why the Quiet Man must keep going, harder than ever, must try to employ more people in his fledgling business, support more of other people’s children?
Does he even notice that the Quiet Man is quieter than ever these days? Trying to sell his house, hoping he can raise enough money to flee the country. He can cut hair anywhere, drive taxis anywhere, write his software anywhere.
Who will the Noisy Ones lean on when the Quiet Man has gone?
Anna is the landlady of the Raccoon Arms. She lives in the Monbazillac area of South West France and still takes a keen interest in British politics.
{ 59 comments }
Please excuse me repeating myself here Anna, it’s still pertinent to your excellent piece. I wrote it in October, and nothing has changed since then:-
Just today, I had a long-awaited meeting with three accomplished and professional property people. It had taken me three weeks to get these people together.
It was a sparse lunch, yeah, a couple of tinctures, but the theme was still exasperation, and severe angst at the failure of this blasted government with their lackey banks, to bring it on.
We discussed seven schemes. Seven big building projects, ranging from, roughly – £6m to £15 million pounds.
Each one, when costed, appraised and verified, (RICS standards I might add) showed a minimal profit for us, but, 10% of fees and/or profit going to other starving businesses, like architects, engineers, builders etc. There was a huge element of ‘funding’ expectation (i.e. what the banks will rake in for their ludicrous ‘risk’), but this stupid administration are getting as bad as the last lot. You’d expect a nulabour crowd to be incompetent and clueless where commercial expertise is required, but the piddling about we’re coping with right now is insufferable.
That 10% going to others, (forget the banks’ take, they’ll stuff you anyway) therefore amounts to about £7,000,000 pounds, which will be used up by waiting, desperate, consultants, builders, sub-contractors etc. The figures are all calculated correctly, and they meet normal financial requirements for funding. There would also be approximately 425 jobs created from our schemes when the buildings are completed, and that’s after the builders have handled countless jobs for tradesmen, labourers, school leavers etc for the next three years..
From now on in, we are forced to ‘negotiate’ with councils for planning permission. We’re not digging out green belt land, despoiling the parks etc, we’re commercial people, making jobs in business areas etc. Councils prefer to prevaricate for months, while the meter clocks up thousands of pounds in interest (banks again), and of course, they might well charge for their ‘advice’. It’s an utter disgrace that these little twerps can hold so much business to ransom, sit on their hands, and try to apply an obscure policy which is beyond his/her understanding, or they go on paternity leave.
I can talk for ages about one particular site which actually had a full planning permission with all boxes ticked, but we were persistently chased away by the council’s weak acceptance of a pullovered National Trust person. Nobody has the resources to fight those sorts of people. The money they have to ‘preserve’ what is in fact a desolate, derelict concrete slab is counted in millions. We decided to leave the council to it, and they still call me (and many others) and cry out that they need what we develop and build. That particular town is rated as one of the most deprived in the UK.
So Scrobs is feeling a bit let down by Cameron and his bunch of wandering people. At this rate, he’ll be asking the Hon Prospective Member for UKIP a few serious questions, like, ‘If you get in, how will you look after your own country first…?’
How little things seem to change in the UK.
I remember distinctly a meeting of project engineers in a large mechanical services company (plumbing , air-conditioning and a multitude of ancillary services for the uninitiated) in 1973. It was basically a year-end summary of the entire companies many projects, the company was then one of the top three grossing companies in its field working all over the UK and a reasonable amount of international work. Our group manager made the observation that nett profitability was in the region of 3% and at that time it would make more business sense to close down the operation and invest the working capital in what was then the national savings certificates which were iirc bearing approx 7%.
This company was well-run and had superb monetary control considering everything was basically done manually (pre personal computer) and was somewhat feared by sub-contractors and suppliers for trimming their margins. It was despised by consulting engineers who thought their practices of demanding additional money for changes of the work in-progress was scandalous and yet it was as near to breakeven as possible and was certainly not over staffed or paying egregious salaries.
At that precise moment I concluded my days in the UK were numbered, I left in February 1974.
These were not the quiet men that Anna is talking of, but they suffered under the same yoke, and it appears from scrobs description that little has changed, despite the pervasive understanding that developers are creaming huge profits.
National politicians should be embarrassed that your posting is oh so true.
I saw the title and wondered what the hell I’d done now
Now I know.
Another post right on the nail. This should be required reading for all politicians, and everyone in a public sector job or on benefits (but I repeat myself) as well.
Ah yes, the quiet man with his government grants. I had almost forgotten about him.
What grants? For Mini-cab driving?
My mistake, I thought we were generalising. You know, all union members are communists, every unemployed person spends the day drinking Stella watching Jeremey Kyle on their plasma TV. Public sector workers sit around all day doing nothing…etc.
No, we were just singing the praises of a large section of the population which doesn’t get any attention – the self-starters, the owner of the small garage, sweeping up after all the staff have gone home, the greengrocer doing his Vat return in the evenings; the people employing one two or three others – not big employers that get help when they are about to go bust – but the thousands of ‘almost’ one man bands. they are the ones who will be at work today, even if the staff have a day off. We’d be in a right pickle as a country without them.
…and all of the sucking on the wealth creating teet of the Quiet Man..
“all union members are communists, every unemployed person spends the day drinking Stella watching Jeremey Kyle on their plasma TV. Public sector workers sit around all day doing nothing…”
Saul, they got to do something. I did 21 years in the civil service, you’re description is more correct than not. The moment a public servant moves one notch of the bottom, they become observers, not workers.
Quiet Woman, surely? As a general rule of thumb, the male minicab driver you mentioned is anything but quiet.
Loved the bit about selling up and legging it. Been waiting for years … youngest almost grown up now … then two less self employed slaves will take their enterprise, their money and their tax revenues somewhere else – where their tax revenues are not used to maintain a state the size of which is just not funny any more.
Yes, we all want coppers, nurses and (if we must have them) teachers (not sure about teachers – fairly sure that what they currently achieve in 11 years or so of full time education could actually be done in a year) but the council leaders on 200k and the 50k diversity co-ordinators and their beautiful, wonderful, precious (can I have one please? I have never had enough money to save for my own) pensions – I really don’t want to keep on paying for them.
This is the kind of post that keeps me coming back most days. Keep it up for 2012, Ms Raccoon.
With over four million self employed it’s not such a tiny minority. Up 4% from last year.
If a Conservative leader put the bulk of this article into his next big speech, he would connect with the electorally critical ‘squeezed’ middle…but is our Conservative leader a Conservative? Now there’s a question.
Great article. Anna goes way up in my ‘favourites’.
All of the above, plus reg-yew-lay-shuns. ( I run a retail financial advice business – I know all about reg-yew-lay-shun by capricious bureaucrats).
Anna, you’ve made Guido’s list again this evening – keep up the good work!
“In a month’s time he will … send off a check for his tax bill.”
A what?
A “check.” It’s something like a “cheque,” only American. I’ll wager you still spell it “gaol,” “waggon,” and the like. It’s the 21st Century FFS. America won the Spelling War a long time ago. I notice you’re using double “inverted commas” (which are not commas any more, but let that pass). The Yanks won that one too– “quotes” they’re called. Or did you not notice you were using them?
It’s the Americans who use 19th century spelling FFS.
wher will he emigrate to. Australia and Canada are trying to emulate thre U.K as fast as they can.
Australia already has ‘communities’, affirmative action, doctors who can’t reall speak English (and don’t care) , heavy dependence on a mining industry which is despised , rampant greens, toothache, mad teachers.
FFS get a map. There are 257 countries in the world.
Very true, John Malpas. Both Canada and Australia are locked in a race to the bottom with political correctness and “ethnic diversity”. Their upside, of course, is that you keep more of what you earn there, but still.
‘Who will the Noisy Ones lean on when the Quiet Man has gone?’
I wish I’d thought of that quote. Sublime.
Excellent post, via Guido. As the co owner and manager of a medium sized manufacturing business having to face the never-ending burden of regulation, the matter I find increasingly depressing is the certainty from the civil service and the ruling political elite who write these rules,of their moral superiority over the “quiet man”. Apparently only they know how to treat their fellow men with compassion and equanimity.
It is this arrogance that has bankrupted the country and indeed the western world. Britain now has a national debt approaching £1 trillion. We have to pay that back just to
be left with absolutely nothing at all, but the people who will have to create the wealth are constantly held back and regulated to the point of non existence whilst our global competitors are trusted and free.
Great, apart for the bit about the train from Penge running on time – that never happens, and if you are talking Penge East you are luck if it turns up at all…
I was a noisier sort of Quiet Man.
But I left as well. 2007. May. Best thing I ever did.
Can’t imagine any circumstance under which I would want to go back.
House is on the market, place abroad is bought and ready to move into.
Lovely, lovely article !
And spot on.
Although I think most of us embarking on self employment do so as a labour of love ( or the result of redundancy ) it’s a desperately difficult endeavour.
Now, I love the work I do and can’t see me doing anything else….but there are some days when I’ve been working all hours, tired, blurry eyed and knowing there’s still a lot more to do, when the thought of a regular 8 hour day becomes SO appealing. And other, worse days, when the works all done and there’s no more on the horizon.
I’ve long thought that the ‘Quiet Men and Women’ should start clearing their throats and bend the ears of politicians with a stern ” Oy ! Any chance of some help here ?”
All in this together ? Mmmm…
Well said.
Many people in the country think they have the right their pension, to their social services, to free education and healthcare and even the clean paved streets. But these are all because of The Quiet Man who pays for much of this and who works on behalf of others. He doesn’t riot or wave banners, he works and pays for everything.
It is becoming increasingly hard to run a small business these days. Each new regulation is meant with good intent but their collective weight is breaking the backs of many. Shops, garages, consultancies are all becoming tax collection agencies bound by health and safety and complex employment laws.
If our Quiet Man can afford to save money after his tax bill then his savings are taxed and eroded by the Bank of England’s mendacious inflation, the highest in the western world. Yet our man does not howl like the benefit recipients who feel entitled to RPI-rated benefit increases for sitting on their backsides.
The game is rigged in favour of big business, big government and the millions who feel entitled to a living (housing, cash, healthcare) from the state and insist our Quiet Man funds their satellite television on top.
Nobody is doing anything to fix this.
Steady now, Anna– you’re starting to sound like Ayn Rand’s fans asking Atlas to shrug. Can’t have that now, mouths need to be fed, carcases need to be housed and clothed; sacrifice, sacrifice, sacrifice– the spirit that made Britain great! How dare you idolise the productive members of Society, when they should be allowed to exist only insofar as they provide the dosh for redistribution to the more worthy amongst us! Vote Labour for Social Justice!
good column – hits the nail …
A few years ago the FT carried a column that also highlightd that those working in the private sector and unenthousiastic about the public sector are putting in a lot and getting preciously little compared to those in the civil service.
It’s behind pay wall, but this is the link to the column ‘Cosy nest of public sector round robin’ by Jonathan Guthrie
http://www.ft.com/cms/s/60567cac-7290-11da-9ff7-0000779e2340,Authorised=false.html?_i_location=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.ft.com%2Fcms%2Fs%2F0%2F60567cac-7290-11da-9ff7-0000779e2340.html&_i_referer=http%3A%2F%2Fsearch.ft.com%2Fsearch%3Fformat%3Darticles%26format%3Dpodcasts%26format%3Dblogs%26format%3Dvideos%26_format%3Don%26selectedFormat%3D%26startDate%3D01%252F08%252F2005%26endDate%3D28%252F12%252F2011%26queryText%3Dpublic%2Bsector%2Bround%26drillDown%3D%26last24Hours%3D%26people%3D%26region%3D%26headline%3D%26siteSection%3D%26byLine%3D%26company%3D%26industry%3D%26commentBy%3D#axzz1hpKso7BN
Oh, it’s just men who do all this then is it?
And it was all going so well!
Thank you for the thank you Anna.
Happy New Year to all; although it could be the one where the finger of fate finally meets the reset button that spells the end of the sick little journey our society has been on for the last four decades at least.
Great post.
I’m the quiet self employed man who has sold almost everything bar furniture, been renting for some time and could exit UK in about 3 months. Have no clue where to go but being single, travelling round the world seems likely. I feel lucky now.
Happy New Year to all.
Actually you are overstating the tax grab – most self-employed people don’t earn enough to pay higher-rate tax ….
Then come to France… I was just taxed for 32,500EUR for money that I didn’t yet receive and have to pay VAT next month [also considerable in the 10,000th] for invoices, which are probably not going to be paid
Er, hang on. So the public servants dont pay tax? I could have sworn they did…..
No, they are merely forced to give back some of the tax monies they are paid with. Public sector workers are a net tax loss to the exchequor.
Yes, unfortunately all those vital services delivered by the public service do cost money. Funny that.
So do all the vital public services (like production and distribution of food, clothing, fuels etc) not run by the public sector. They cost money too, so the people doing them charge for their services and have to pay tax on what they charge. If they didn’t do what they do, we wouldn’t get fed and there would be no tax revenue to pay for all the Diversity Co-ordinators and the Arts Establishment.
While I do take the point about diversity co-ordinators and, to a certain extent, the Arts establishment, this just seems like an attempt to jump on the bandwagon currently demonising public servants. Yes the public service does waste money but it also delivers vital services. The question should be about how we can deliver those services using fewer resources, rather than this attempt to cash in on the current zeitgeist condemning all public servants.
There is also a belief in some quarters that if it’s vital to the public, it must be provided by the State. (That’s why I used the ‘food’ example, to demonstrate that the State doesn’t have to control something for it to work well.)
It is beyond debate that the public sector costs too much (that’s why we have a £127bn deficit this financial year), so it is time to have a sensible debate about what the State should and should not do. There are some things that are best under government control – the defence of the realm, keeping the Queen’s peace and the administration of justice, for example – but almost everything else could (not necessarily should, merely could) be done by private enterprise. Education, for one, if means can be found to ensure that the poorest have as much opportunity as the richest.
To return to the theme of the thread, there are many out there in the private sector working damned hard and paying some pretty swingeing taxes on their sometimes not-very-substantial earnings. It’s been tough for many of them since 2008 – the construction sector shrank by 25% in 2008/9 alone, for example. It rather sticks in their craw to see public servants whinging about modest cuts to their pensions (a fight not supported by all on the public payroll, I accept), when it is they who have to fund them by taxes on their enterprise, and when funding their own costs so much.
We owe a very great deal to the self-employed and small businesses of this land. Without them, we really would be in a serious hole – and we would be totally unable to afford all but the most basic of public services.
Education and health can still be privatised but still paid for by the state. The state doesn’t have to do the whole kit and caboodle. It just means that private companies do the managing whilst the state pays for those who can’t afford to pay for themselves. Like housing. Housing benefit is paid to private landlords, but the state doesn’t need to be the landlord too. All schools could be privately run and all paid a certain amount per child for compulsory education (not nationally set as each region has different costs). The state can still set standards. But the school, who knows it’s local environment better than anyone, can decide who it wants, when it wants them, and what it wants to spend it’s money on. All these schools are doing things differently – and over time the ones that are doing best will have their methods picked on and used by others benefitting everyone.
Sorry Whataloadoftosh, but whilst the truth may hurt, you need to understand that there are two primary categories of job out there.
Jobs that create wealth.
Jobs that consume wealth.
The Public sector is the second category which can only exist because of the taxes paid by the first category.
The second category cannot possibly exist without the first category. The first category can thrive in the absence of the majority of the second category.
The first category actually pays the taxes of the second category!
Very nice piece Anna, and a fine albeit depressing first comment from the Scrobster. Happy Crim and New Year to one and all.
Oh, come off it. Self-employment is the very definition of self-serving. If self-employed people do well, good for them, but if they fail, that’s the risk they took.
It says everything that the author of this piece thinks the world would be worse off without “the mini cab driver who took you to work this morning”. Newsflash, Anna – those of us in the real world don’t get minicabs to work, and don’t think it’s a public service to drive a minicab.
I work in the public sector. I could be paid more money to work in the private sector, but I didn’t want to chase money, I wanted to do something that would help people. And I do help people.
But I am sick, sick, sick, sick, sick of people like you, and a lot of the posters here, claiming that anyone in the public sector is a leach on “the taxpayer” (as if I don’t pay tax). What kind of bizarre logic is it that says that it’s more noble to pursue your own private profit than to try and help others? That is just sickening.
A couple of other points. Engineer – the reason the deficit is so big is the banks – private sector incompetence, not an inefficient state. That’s just a matter of fact. Before the bank bailouts, spending was happening at a sustainable rate, and George Osborne had admitted it by committing to maintaining Labour’s spending levels.
There are many out there in the public sector working damned hard and paying some pretty swingeing taxes on their sometimes not-very-substantial earnings. A nurse in the public sector earns less than half what a nurse earns in a private hospital. State teachers earn a fraction of what private school teachers earn. Do we really want to drive every decent nurse or teacher into the private institutions that only serve the rich? Better pensions are a small compensation for massively inferior wages for similar work.
And finally, this idea that public services could be delivered by the priate sector and paid for by the State – well, yes they could, but what would be the point of that? It’s just pure ideology. The taxpayer would still have to pay for the service, but the private company wouldn’t do it out of charity, so we taxpayers have to pay for a profit margin as well. Meanwhile the entire incentive becomes to cut costs and so raise profits. If the service gets worse, the taxpayer doesn’t even realise any corresponding cost savings because it all goes into private profit. What kind of madness is that?
James – Just exactly what is wrong with a private profit? Could it be that you have not the slightest idea how to generate one yourself?
If there were no profits there would be nothing to tax and no money to pay bureaucrats, politicians or welfare dependents. Unless you got it from rich foreigners which is basically what our financial services ‘industry’ tries to do.
I am just as sick of hearing people who live on the public purse telling us how vitally important and selfless they all are. Always trotting out the poor underpaid nurses, the police, the teachers. What about the so-called CEOs of local government being paid more than the PM to do a job that used to be called Town Clerk? They try to justify that because of the scale of the budget they are ‘responsible’ for.
Any fool can spend money, just look at Gordon Brown. However not many can find a way of earning it by offering a product or service that people actually want to buy. That’s the activity that pays the national bills, however altruistic and self-denying you might claim to be. Try it some time, using your own savings, and see how you get on.
For every one of those CEO’s on 6 figure salaries there are thousands of administrative and lower managerial staff on much less than the average salary for the country. Perhaps you and the Daily Mail might want to remember that when you’re demonising people who were not responsible for the current economic situation but are now being blamed for all society’s ills.
The average salary many public sector workers might be less than the country as a whole, but it’s not just the money in the pocket that should be counted. The whole package should be included. For example public sector pensions are usually better than private sector pensions, eg. There are few if any final salary pensions in the private sector anymore. The benefits that public sector workers get tend to be better than in the private, eg. milage rates for council staff are sometimes above HMRC levels. Then there is the seemingly lack of being able to sack inefficent staff.
Yes there are large organisations which are as inefficent as the public sector, but that’s their money to waste not the public’s.
The vast majority of companies in the uk are SME with under a hundred staff, these are the ones who look to the public sector with their cosy working environments and are jealous of it as they work hard not knowing if their company will survive to the next year.
And then there is the key point which you mention – “the thousands of administrative and lower managerial staff”. There should be fewer of them and there should be more front line nurses, teachers, police and firepersons. And the people doing these front line jobs should be selected on their ability to do the job and not on progressive equality lines.
You are right though on who is responsible. It’s not the public sector. It was Gordon Brown for spending at levels way above what the goverment was earning in taxes and putting the FSA in charge of the banks rather than the BoE and then when Northern Rock when wobbly bailing them out rather than letting them fail.
And it’s Osborne for carrying on the spending. Yes there have been cuts but the government is still spending more than Labour did.
“For every one of those CEO’s on 6 figure salaries there are thousands of administrative and lower managerial staff on much less than the average salary for the country. ”
And in the private sector likewise. It’s called pay differentials on promotion (but that’s not available to the self-employed).
The public sector used to be paid less than the private sector for two reasons
A Job security – the public sector can’t go bust
B Pensions – public sector pensions are more generous (any private sector pension scheme that tries to match the inflation-proofing of the public sector or offer higher accumulation rates will lose its tax shelter).
Gordon Brown increased average public sector nominal pay to more than that in the private sector so, allowing for the cost of pensions, public sector workers are now paid around 20% more than private sector workers (and still have more job security).
I don’t read the Daily Mail, I don’t demonise public sector workers but I do work a lot harder for less money than the average civil servant. My wife, like James, works in the public sector because she wants to help people and repeatedly complains that I work too much.
When not working I prefer to deal with self-employed people because they are more willing to put themselves out to help a customer and more honest in dealing with regular customers – in contrast to public sector bureaucrats where for every decent helpful one I’ve encountered there have been two who were either too idle to do the job properly or who twisted and distorted the facts to get the result they wanted.
James – self-employed is NOT “self-serving”: if you talk like that you have no right to criticise the Daily Mail. Secondly the “profit” for the self-employed is just an Inland Revenue term for wages. If “profit” is a dirty word then “wages” and “salary” should be also.
Thirdly spending was not sustainable before the banking crisis – even Alastair Darling admitted that – a structural deficit of over 9% is not sustainable. Osborne made an unwise promise based on assuming Brown’s outright lies were near the truth: he has since increased taxes to bridge part of the gap exposed by Darling and OBR has shown that Darling understated it.
James – a couple of points.
No banker has ever been responsible for setting the level of public spending. Responsibility for that lies solely and entirely with politicians. The decision to throw the public’s money at failed banks also lies solely and entirely with politicians (and possibly with the complicity of the Bank of England). Don’t just swallow the spin about ‘greedy bankers’ (and oh yes – there are some!) without thinking through the facts of the matter.
Having worked in both public and private sectors, I can assure you that there are some (not all) in the public sector who truly believe that the world owes them a living, and a good one at that. That attitude rarely exists in smaller private sector organisations or amonst the self-employed, because they are starkly aware that they have to EARN their living – it never ‘just appears’ in the bank account at the end of the month.
Time the quiet man was less quiet and thought about doing something to redress the balance. Surely if the Syrians can…………………..
Fine. Some points I accept – clearly it is not the bankers who decided to bail out the banks with public money. And of course there are both ultra-hardworking, well-meaning people in the private sector, and lazy, greedy people in the public sector. No reasonable person could deny any of those things.
But I didn’t blame “greedy bankers”; I just pointed out that a massive proportion of the deficit derives from the cost of bailing out the banks. That’s not casting aspersions at individuals, it’s just a fact. The incentives were wrong, the regulation was flawed, the system allowed it. I’m no partisan, and if Alistair Darling says that we would have needed to rein in spending anyway, so be it, but that can’t hide that a huge amount of our economy’s overstretch is down to the bank bailouts.
Rick Hamilton – if there were no profits, there would be no tax, fine. But if there were no tax there would be no police, no security, and therefore no profits for those who couldn’t physically defend themselves. No law, in other words. We need a state, we need a private sector, and it’s ridiculous that anyone could suggest otherwise – yet somehow it seems to be fashionable to suggest we don’t need a state.
Could I generate a profit myself? In all honesty, I can’t prove it either way. I assume I probably could, given that I’m intelligent and willing to work hard. But I’ve never particularly wanted to – it feels selfish to me, and I couldn’t be motivated by it.
No disrespect intended to those who do it to give their families a good life, but I don’t have a family to support, I don’t need much money and I want a job where I can come home at the end of the day and know I helped make the world a better place for someone else.
James – Well that’s a fair reply. Keep up the good work, whatever it may be.
And a Happy New Year to you.
James – that’s a fair and reasonable response, but may I correct one point?
The country was running a deficit (albeit a relatively small one) before the 2008 crisis. The banks were at the time making record profits, and in consequence paying record sums in tax. Government believed the economic situation to be sound and sustainable, and set levels of public expenditure that accorded with tax receipts (indeed, as mentioned above, somewhat exceeded them). When the crisis broke, and bank profits tumbled, tax receipts also tumbled, but public expenditure commitments did not. That’s where most of the present deficit arose.
The amount of public money directed to banks in the immediate crisis is difficult to pin down, but seems to be a lot less than is generally supposed. I’ve seen figures of between £14bn and £50bn, but I don’t know which to believe. It is clear, however, that the deficit arose mainly because of the drop in tax revenue from banks, not because of public funds they received (some of which we’ll get back, eventually).
It’s also true that public expenditure is also still rising year on year, though not at such a fast rate as it was. The constant reference to ‘Cuts’ in some sections of the media are a trifle misleading. When he came to office, Osborne gambled that a return to economic growth would steadily increase tax receipts, thus eroding the deficit (in combination with a tighter control on spending). His plans have been somewhat derailed by the current European/North American debt crisis, and it’s stifling of economic growth.
Things this coming year might be very difficult for all of us – we’ll just have to wait and see how the global economic picture unfolds. Let us all fervently hope that things turn out rather better than they currently look like they might.
Yes, it’s the “quiet men” who generally perform above and beyond the call of duty – because that’s how you survive and hopefully thrive. I wearied of all the tax and legislation oppression doled out to those who could least afford to comply. I jumped ship eight or nine years ago, and I’ve not had a moment’s regret.