A Place to Stand

  Thanks to the reader who told me this letter had been published today in the Yorkshire Post.

All smoke and mirror
The new French President, Francois Hollande, is being given a considerable amount of credit for being for “growth not austerity” and by implication Britain’s Labour party gets the same. In fact, this is all smoke and mirrors.


The Conservative Party in Britain is not practising “austerity” – borrowing £100bn a year is not austere by any normal definition of the word.


Nor is Labour supporting growth. All they are proposing is to slightly increase this “austere” £100bn and let spending provide the illusion of growth.


Growth is being achieved outside the EU – the world is growing at an average of six per cent annually, and has been doing so since our politicians first blamed the non-existent “world recession” for their achievements. What the world’s fastest growing economies have in common is growing economic freedom and allowing cheap energy.


Every single MP (and economic journalist) knows that this is the formula that could get us out of recession and into fast growth within days if they wanted it.


Thus, by definition, no single remotely honest MP denies this. Admittedly this means all the honest MPs and MSPs would fit in a minibus.

  This went out to newspapers across the country on 11th May so presumably it has been kept in case they needed a filler. Fair enough - one fact is that it is true, another is that the MSM has,  except for this, absolutely refused to discuss the option of making a real attempt to get out of recession. Perhaps it is connected with Yorkshire being near the shale reserves though perhaps it is just happenstance.