"Never had it so good"

In 1957 Prime Minister Harold Macmillan gave a speech in Bedford in which he said "most of our people have never had it so good." At the time, the speech was said to be optimistic (if not arrogant), but in fact it was meant as a warning. Mr. Macmillan was trying to say that the recent years of prosperity wouldn't last forever.

Today Lord Young was forced to resign after saying "For the vast majority of people in the country today, they have never had it so good..."

He wasn't a member of the government (he was the PM's enterprise adviser), but it is still embarrassing for David Cameron.

It must be especially annoying for Lord Young as what he said was true. People who are in work and have a mortgage are doing quite well. As interest rates are so low, mortgage repayments are very small.

This group of people (which is sizeable) suddenly have more money at the end of month and can't be feeling too bad at the moment. However, they have job losses and public service cuts to come.

To me, Lord Young's ill-advised words seem like a Macmillan-style warning.

When politics gets violent

Today thousands of prospective students, current students, lecturers and ordinary people peacefully marched through Westminster in protest to the government's proposed lifting of the cap on tuition fees.

Sadly, these peaceful protesters will not on appear on the front pages of tomorrow's newspapers. Instead, images of the violence at Millbank Tower (the location of Conservative party HQ) will be what millions of people will see when they read their daily papers tomorrow morning. And none of this will change the governmen's policy - if anything, the violent protests have now made the new fees more likely to happen.

The blurb to this blog states my dedication to impartiality, but there is one issue where I feel I should state my opinion. To quote Winston Churchill, democracy is the worst form of Government except all those other forms that have been tried from time to time. Most of the violent protesters were not students (nor are they ever likely to be), they were anarchists, who dislike democracy and believe direct action is the best way to achieve their goals. To be blunt, they are wrong.

This morning the Liberal Democrat MPs were very nervous about the changes to funding. At PMQs today, the Deputy Prime Minister (standing in for the David Cameron who's in Seoul) faced question after question about his party's sudden change in opinion on university fees. Many of Nick Clegg's MPs were terrified that this issue could lose them their seats and where talking about voting against the Bill when it comes to Parliament. However, the British public tend to support the campaigns of ordered and civil protesters, but quickly turn against those who resort to violence. Meaning those Liberal Democrat MPs probably feel a little safer now.

Direct action simply doesn't work in a democratic society, and it often has the opposite effect than that desired by its proponents. If you want to change policy in a democracy, debate the issue, convince people of your point of view, and scare the MPs with your support, but don't start smashing windows as it will get you nowhere.

Even I understand this

I must confess, although I love politics, I have little knowledge of economics (budgets speeches tend to send me to sleep). However, I had no problem understanding the Spending Review - we've run out of money and all need to cut expenditure (all of us).

Even the Queen faces a 14% cut, although having been on the thrown for almost 60 years, Her Majesty has been through spending cuts before - unlike many of the civil servants currenlty working in government departments.

For the last decade, government departments have seen increased spending and investment every year, and for many who have grown up with that culture, it will be very difficult to change.

The UK we see today has come about as a result of the investment culture, what the UK looks like after a parliament of the cutting culture is anyone's guess.

Democracy in action

We in the United Kingdom often describe our nation as 'one of the world's oldest democracies'. But in reality, the UK is not a democracy, neither is France, or the United States or even Switzerland. In fact no country in the world is a democracy - not a real democracy anyway.

A democracy is when the will of the people is enacted, where every decision is decided by the people. That's not what happens in our system of government. We don't make the decisions ourselves, we elect the people to make the decisions for us. Today those people who we elected just over a month ago said they want us to make some of the hard decisions, and in so doing brought us closer to being a real democracy.

Today the Chancellor said that the public will be consulted on where cuts in the government should be made. This is something rather unique in the UK, the idea that a government, faced with bringing pain to great sections of country, should ask the public what to do, instead of making unilateral decisions. The flaw in the plan is the flaw in democracy, which is those with the minority view get exclude. The highest population of the UK is in southern England, but most government spending is in Northern Ireland, Scotland, Wales and northern England. Will public services be cut in the areas of lowest population, but perhaps the most need?

The other flaw in democracy is that if the wrong decision is made, the public only have themselves to blame, which is perhaps why the idea is so appealing to the government. If in five years time the public don't like the pain caused by the cuts, the government will just have to say 'but it only what you told us to do'!