El Gordo has spent £39 billion of our money in just 6 short weeks:
Gordon Brown has announced more than £39bn in government spending since he became prime minister,
Doesn’t it just make you tingle with excitement?
£39 billion that could have been fructifying in the pockets of the populace rather than spent on the desires of a dour Scotsman.
Ah, Tim. You’re forgetting your history. Just because New Labour make an *announcement* about anything, it doesn’t mean they’re actually going to *do* anything.
And, going on their past form, I wouldn’t be surprised to hear that this £39bn is previously announced money being reannounced.
If I may say so, that would be better phrased as “£39 billion that could have been fructifying in the pockets of the populace rather than spent on the desires of THE WRONG dour Scotsman”.
Dearime, which is the right one? Adam Smith?
Tim adds: I think you’ll find that Dearieme is Scottish…..
“Tingle with excitement”? No.
But I do seem to be getting this curious itchy feeling in my right forefinger.
It’s buying votes with other people’s money, it works – and it may be the single worst flaw of democracy.
Kudos to the Guardian for pointing it out.
Any country which manages to clamp down on this (eg by the kind of self-binding legislation suggested by Milton Friedman) will be streets ahead.
In the USA this kind of stuff is, as usual, more transparent (eg. the outcry over ‘pork and ‘earmarks’) – in the UK there isn’t much discussion of it.
A major mechanism of vote buying is the Lottery Projects. As Thomas Sowell recently described –
http://www.townhall.com/columnists/ThomasSowell/2007/08/07/a_bridge_too_far_gone
– vote-buying leads to glitzy but useless public relations projects (with ribbon-cutting ceremonies) at the expense of routine maintenance and doing a good job.
“vote-buying leads to glitzy but useless public relations projects (with ribbon-cutting ceremonies) at the expense of routine maintenance and doing a good job. ”
If I may quote news anchor Kent Brockman, “I’ve said it before, and I’ll say it again: democracy just doesn’t work.”
Kay Tie,
Maybe so, but it’s the best form of government yet discovered. the trick seems to be keeping the pols’ snouts out of as much of the trough as possible.
Random periodic executions strike me as a viable solution pour encourager les autres.
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