Friday, July 20, 2012
Does Anybody Dispute We would be Out Of recession in Weeks With UKIP's Economic Policies?
Last night the BBC's This week devoted some time to letting Simon Jenkins promote his lunatic scheme to get out of recession.
Print £500 worth of notes for everybody in Britain and give it to them.
As a Spitting Image send up of Keynesian economics this might be worth the airtime though I think it would be too silly for Johns Bird and Fortune to rip apart. It is reminiscent of Keynes' non-serious remarks about burying bottles of £ notes and letting the free market dig them up but omits the stimulus of actually letting the market do the work of digging.
Such is the BBC. However by comparison I have noted that, even though UKIP occasionally are allowed to appear on abstruse subjects (Nigel Farage being presumably the only politician they could find willing to say that the Mau Mau rebellion is not a current issue). But we never get invited to explain UKIP economic policy.
I take some pride in the fact that no politician, economist or journalist, except Brian Monteith and somebody from the IEA, who broadly approve, have been willing to say anything about my 24 point programme out of recession in days - let alone disagree in any way (or do anything). This seems to be very similar to the treatment of UKIP's programme. So lets compare them.
1 - Cut government spending - UKIP say roughly the same, being committed to getting the government back to the number of employees before Labour got in.
2 - Cutting Corporation Tax - Yes, though perhaps not with as much enthusiasm as I.
3 - Cut Business rates - not urgently
4 - Gutting the HSE - certainly a strong general commitment to cutting regulation though again not with quite my glee.
5, 24 - Nuclear Power plants and shale gas - Yes.
9 - Quit the EU. Check.
10 - Almost unrestricted housebuilding using modular methods - UKIP support modularity but not simply letting people build anywhere. Perhaps this is partly local since Scotland has more empty land than London.
11 - Cutting "environmental" restrictions. Yes.
12 - No longer relevant.
13 - X-Prize foundation. YES
14 - When the deficit is ended cut taxes rather than raise government spending. Yes, unlike the rest (e.g Nick Clegg's "I didn't get into politics to balance the books")
20 - Stop subsidising windmillery. Check.
6,7,8,15,16,17,18,19,21,22,23 - Improve roads, adult education, automate rail, artificial floating islands, encourage mass production of nuclear plants, read Pournelle, encourage private X-Prizes, aim to get 2% of GNP into X-Prizes, HVDC international electric grid, call for evidence for the Linear No Threshold radiation theory or its abolition, Orion nuclear rocket programme -- No formal commitment.
So we are almost at one on the basics. On the particular high tech items they have no formal commitment, with the exception of the immediate X-Prize foundation. However none of these are things on which (A) it is necessary to have an immediate opinion because they would only be started when were beyond the immediate insolvency problem; (B) while some are important they are all subsets of programmes we do have and need not therefore be spelled out; & (C) they are not formally against any (though I admit the Orion programme would require quite a bit of selling, by anybody including myself).
So basically if nobody can dispute that my programme "would get us out of recession in days" (as I have regularly said on Redwood, Carswell's, Hannan's and a range of other sites) then it seems certain UKIP's economic policy could, at the very least "get us out of recession in weeks".
Which makes it all the more surprising that the broadcast media simply will not allow discussion of it, while giving space to the purest big state print and spend lunacies.
Or, assuming the BBC is simply a propaganda organisation with no interest in its legal duty of balance, perhaps it explains it perfectly.
You will have noted that even where we somewhat differ in not one of these cases is any other BBC supported parties closer or even as close to my view as UKIP. Granted the Tories and Labour both nominally support allowing some new nuclear but in practice 15 years of their rule has not allowed a spade to be turned. No wonder we are in recession.
Print £500 worth of notes for everybody in Britain and give it to them.
As a Spitting Image send up of Keynesian economics this might be worth the airtime though I think it would be too silly for Johns Bird and Fortune to rip apart. It is reminiscent of Keynes' non-serious remarks about burying bottles of £ notes and letting the free market dig them up but omits the stimulus of actually letting the market do the work of digging.
Such is the BBC. However by comparison I have noted that, even though UKIP occasionally are allowed to appear on abstruse subjects (Nigel Farage being presumably the only politician they could find willing to say that the Mau Mau rebellion is not a current issue). But we never get invited to explain UKIP economic policy.
I take some pride in the fact that no politician, economist or journalist, except Brian Monteith and somebody from the IEA, who broadly approve, have been willing to say anything about my 24 point programme out of recession in days - let alone disagree in any way (or do anything). This seems to be very similar to the treatment of UKIP's programme. So lets compare them.
1 - Cut government spending - UKIP say roughly the same, being committed to getting the government back to the number of employees before Labour got in.
2 - Cutting Corporation Tax - Yes, though perhaps not with as much enthusiasm as I.
3 - Cut Business rates - not urgently
4 - Gutting the HSE - certainly a strong general commitment to cutting regulation though again not with quite my glee.
5, 24 - Nuclear Power plants and shale gas - Yes.
9 - Quit the EU. Check.
10 - Almost unrestricted housebuilding using modular methods - UKIP support modularity but not simply letting people build anywhere. Perhaps this is partly local since Scotland has more empty land than London.
11 - Cutting "environmental" restrictions. Yes.
12 - No longer relevant.
13 - X-Prize foundation. YES
14 - When the deficit is ended cut taxes rather than raise government spending. Yes, unlike the rest (e.g Nick Clegg's "I didn't get into politics to balance the books")
20 - Stop subsidising windmillery. Check.
6,7,8,15,16,17,18,19,21,22,23 - Improve roads, adult education, automate rail, artificial floating islands, encourage mass production of nuclear plants, read Pournelle, encourage private X-Prizes, aim to get 2% of GNP into X-Prizes, HVDC international electric grid, call for evidence for the Linear No Threshold radiation theory or its abolition, Orion nuclear rocket programme -- No formal commitment.
So we are almost at one on the basics. On the particular high tech items they have no formal commitment, with the exception of the immediate X-Prize foundation. However none of these are things on which (A) it is necessary to have an immediate opinion because they would only be started when were beyond the immediate insolvency problem; (B) while some are important they are all subsets of programmes we do have and need not therefore be spelled out; & (C) they are not formally against any (though I admit the Orion programme would require quite a bit of selling, by anybody including myself).
So basically if nobody can dispute that my programme "would get us out of recession in days" (as I have regularly said on Redwood, Carswell's, Hannan's and a range of other sites) then it seems certain UKIP's economic policy could, at the very least "get us out of recession in weeks".
Which makes it all the more surprising that the broadcast media simply will not allow discussion of it, while giving space to the purest big state print and spend lunacies.
Or, assuming the BBC is simply a propaganda organisation with no interest in its legal duty of balance, perhaps it explains it perfectly.
You will have noted that even where we somewhat differ in not one of these cases is any other BBC supported parties closer or even as close to my view as UKIP. Granted the Tories and Labour both nominally support allowing some new nuclear but in practice 15 years of their rule has not allowed a spade to be turned. No wonder we are in recession.
Labels: economics, Fixing the economy, UKIP
