Posted on 10/16/2009 9:19:55 PM PDT by Lorianne
Britain has hit its reality moment. The Brits are ahead of us when it comes to public indebtedness and national irresponsibility. Spending has been out of control for longer and in a more sustained way.
But in that country, the climate of opinion has turned. There, voters are ready for a politician willing to face reality. And George Osborne, who would become the chancellor of the Exchequer in the likely event that his Conservative Party wins the next election, has aggressively seized the moment.
In a party conference address earlier this month, Osborne gave the speech that an American politician will someday have to give. He said that he is not ideologically hostile to government. “Millions of Britons depend on public services and cannot opt out,” he declared. He defended government workers against those who would deride them as self-serving bureaucrats: “Conservatives should never use lazy rhetoric that belittles those who are employed by the government.”
But, he pivoted, “it is because we treat those who work in our public sector with respect that I want to be straight with you about the choices we face.” The British government needs to cut back.
Osborne declared that his government would raise the retirement age. That age was scheduled to rise at some point in the distant future. Osborne vowed to increase it sometime in the next five to 10 years.
Osborne declared that there would be no tax cuts any time soon. He said that as a matter of principle he believes that the top income tax rate of 50 percent is too high. But, he continued, “we cannot even think of abolishing the 50 percent rate in the rich” while others down the income scale are asked to scrimp.
(Excerpt) Read more at nytimes.com ...
Lazy rhetoric or rhetoric about the lazy?
It’s simple: We are in the calm before the storm. The stuff is going to hit the fan and there are a lot of heads buried in the sand. It’s called Denial.
Precisely as Mark Steyn has predicted: once a nation nationalizes its healthcare, a conservative government becomes an impossibilty. There will from thereafter be two parties, and the one on the “right” will be selling the idea that it can deliver the massive government services more economically than the one on the “left.”
I don’t think they’re talking about socialized healthcare here, but certainly that is a lose. You want a critical doctor shortage? Then nationalize health care.
The "Conservative" party of Britain is about the same political swamp as the dims in the US.
Yes, 100's of thousands of government employees need to be laid off.
Yes, Billions and Trillons of dollar in spending need to be ended.
And yes, we NEED TAX CUTS MOST OF ALL.
An old political joke in Canada runs like this:
At an all-candidates election forum; the Conservative leader pledged support for health care from “birth to death”.
The Liberal leader promised health care from “womb to tomb”.
That's nothing, scoffed the (Socialist) NDP leader. We stand for health care from “erection to resurrection”.
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Brooks is inspired by (ripping this off from) last week’s issue of the Economist.
Any conservative who pays attention to what’s going on in the govt and the world can see through Brooks’ arguments. I am afraid tho that his “logic” can prevail against the scant-informed, who may somehow pick up that this is what “conservative intellectuals” think...
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