Well, Ken does have a point here actually.
The same problem arose with the introduction of congestion charging,
when predictions of doom were the daily diet of a vast majority of the
media for months before the introduction of the scheme, particularly
the print media.
There was not a motoring correspondent who did not predict the end
of civilisation as we know it. In fact, as was all too obvious, they
actually wanted their crazed headlines to come true. They were not just
hyping up negative stories for circulation – they actually believed
what they wrote. They were proved wrong.
That’s because congestion charging is an intelligent piece of economics. It was Sir Alan Walters who did the original work on it: you remember him? Margaret Thatcher’s person economic advisor. The one policy that you’ve implemented that could indeed be called successful was straight out of the Thatcherite playbook. Excellent, stopped clocks and all that, correct occasionally.
Now, does your desire to splurge billions upon pump priming and centrally controlled regeneration meet the same test? Is it economically effective, supported in theory by the vast majority of economists and, crucially, is it a good sensible right wing idea? No? Then you really can’t use your use of one decent idea to argue that all of your ideas are decent then, can you?
Leave a Reply