Tim Worstall

This is Politics Folks

Why would anyone be surprised by this?

Three out of four new transport projects, including
upgrading roads, traffic control schemes and bus route improvements,
are going to Labour-held constituencies, according to a survey
published last night.

The analysis prepared by the
Conservatives showed that 118 Labour constituencies in England
benefited from major projects, compared with 23 Conservative and 17
Liberal Democrat-held areas over the past 12 months.

Chris
Grayling, the Conservative transport spokesman, said provision should
be dictated by what the country needed "not by what the Labour Party
thinks is in its best electoral interests".

Politics is the process of getting a cushy job by taking control of the State by getting people to vote for you. You get those votes by promising to shower State spending upon those who vote for you. You keep those votes by actually doing so.

This is bribery, yes, this is buying votes. But when did anyone think politics was anything else?

In

9 responses

  1. Cllr. Gavin Ayling Avatar
    Cllr. Gavin Ayling

    What is troubling is so many people don’t believe it! West Sussex County Council is receiving a 2.4% increase in its government grant while others elsewhere receive 9.5% plus!
    This is abuse of power and it is not mooted publicly (i.e. by the BBC).

    Reply
  2. Thon Brocket Avatar
    Thon Brocket

    Structural problem, common to all democracies and ineradicable in their current form. Fix it by separating legislation from taxation by constituting and separately electing assemblies to legislste and to pay for the legislation via taxes. Legislators don’t tax, taxers don’t legislate and the root malfunction of democracy is cured.
    Never happen, though.

    Reply
  3. Matthew Avatar
    Matthew

    Why do you say ‘it’s all politicians’ and then believe a Conservative Party report? It might be true, but surely you should show a little more scepticism.
    Tim adds: I don’t doubt that Conservatives would do exactly the same thing were they in power.

    Reply
  4. zgatt Avatar
    zgatt

    Shouldn’t this be normalized by the number of constituencies, or by the populations being served by the constituencies in question, or even by the wealth and needs of the populations in question?
    Absolute counts can be very misleading.

    Reply
  5. Jim the lurker Avatar
    Jim the lurker

    Without looking into it, surely it is likely that as labour constituencies tend to be in urban areas – greatly in need of transport infrastructure improvments – rather than rural areas – less in need of major schemes – then it is logical to have more schemes in labour held areas. Whilst rural areas are in need of greater public transport links they are not neccesarily in need of traffic control schemes or bus lanes?
    It is also likely that many using and benefiting from the urban improvements will be rural commuters.
    So in my mind this is ignorant political point scoring and doesn’t really address the impact of this country’s poor transport infrastructure.

    Reply
  6. sanbikinoriaon Avatar
    sanbikinoriaon

    amen.

    Reply
  7. Mark Wadsworth Avatar
    Mark Wadsworth

    Cllr Gavin Ayling’s point is completely and absolutely true (there’s more on this on the isitfair website).
    I was horrified when Tony Blair claimed (before the last local elections) that “Labour councils have lowest council tax” but that also turns out to be true. What TB didn’t mention was that Labour councils get lots more dosh from the “Formula Grant”.

    Reply
  8. MARK T Avatar
    MARK T

    I believe that 75% of spending on Schools ‘n ‘ospitals is also in labour constituences (Wat Tyler I think)

    Reply
  9. HJHJ Avatar
    HJHJ

    Jim the Lurker may have a point, but it is counterbalanced by the fact that Labour held constituencies have, on average, far lower populations than Conservative held ones.

    Reply

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