Can the Unions actually count?

Innumeracy is a problem, a blight on our society. It's distressing, and more should be done to stop it. However, I'm sceptical that placing sufferers at the head of Trades Unions is a solution.

In fact. I'm fed up with the general tenor of the discussion of the budget: here is a fascinating table from the HoC library (page 8), showing government spending between now and 2015-16, current (i.e. non capital) and total:

Current and Total expenditure (£m, real at today's prices)
2010-11:     637.3     696.8
2011-12:     639.0     686.8
2012-13:     637.4     682.1
2013-14:     634.5     675.1
2014-15:     630.6     671.4
2015-16:     630.6     671.5
%change:     -1%        -4%

Overall, the change in public expenditure 2010/11 - 2015/16 is 4% down in real terms, actually a substantial rise in nominal expenditure. The budget report (page 45) points out pretty clearly that nominal expenditure rises by about £60bn over the period, or around 10%.

Here are the Unions on that today:

• "A savage and opportunistic attack on public services ... [that] goes far further than even the dark days of Thatcher"
• "What they take apart now could take generations to rebuild. Decent public services are the glue that holds a civilised society together and we diminish them at our peril. Cut services, put jobs in peril and increase inequality, that's the way to make Britain a darker, brutish, more frightening place."
• And predictably, Bob Crow has called for a campaign of "civil disobedience"

I don't think this is justified over a 4% reduction in real expenditure, and in fact I think pretending it does makes you a moron. Although, I don't deny the debate is important and there is a sound discussion over what the right economic policy is: for example, a good retort would be that comparative spend is what matters, and broadly I would agree they are right: a quick check on this reveals that expenditure is forecast to stabilise at 39-40% of GDP (budget report above, page 16), or to put it more plainly, higher than the levels for the entire period 1997/98 - 2003/4.

So I would like to ask politely, could everyone just get a grip on the numbers before they debate them; and if you don't know or cannot understand the numbers, could you just shut up. For I think commenting on economic policy when you can't count does make you worthy of the anathema.

Unedifying

There's an irony in commenting on things that you disapprove of being commented on, so I will restrain myself on Hague save to say the whole thing is a little unedifying. There may be something to this; there may not, but the crass crowing of Guido over the success of his campaign is unpleasant, though I do owe it to him for this faintly absurd comment from the Mirror which seems to argue that if only we had Palmerston in power, all would be better - not something I ever imagined them saying.

They are of course right, though for the wrong reasons. It would be better if we conducted our institutions along the lines of what they imagine the nineteenth century to be, without a spiteful, envious electorate seizing eagerly on any real or imagined hint of unorthodoxy or irregularity in their affairs. And instead let what are undoubtedly able men get on with running the offices of state (and lambast them when they fail), rather than this gossip laden and ugly interlude before real politics starts again. Even if there is a little dodge on public money, it doesn't matter; there are more important things at stake.

Not that this is new. I'm reading this account of the career of Athanasius, the fourth century bishop of Alexandria, and the travails attending his somewhat chequered career. His opponents couldn't distinguish the important from the unimportant either.

Just as he did, I hope Hague has no hesitation in using the anathema, though I fear it may have the same mixed effect: Athanasius spent much of his episcopate in exile.

Bibliography, August 2010

Read (11)
BOTM: M.Baffy, They were found wanting

M. Banffy, They were divided
A. Christie, Death in the Clouds
M. Druon, Le poisons de la couronne
B. Ehrmann, The Orthodox Corruption of Scripture
M. Gogol, Diary of a madman and other stories
G. Greer, The female Eunuch
J. Kelman, How Late it was, how late
I. Murdoch, The nice and the good
L. Sterne, A sentimental JourneyK. Williams, The Kenneth Williams Diaries

Remaining - 41

In exciting news, I've found my commonplace book again. I've not written in it for a year or so. This went in though:

'But Mannestreue, that old German tradition that a man must be as good as his word, did not only apply to the glamour and chivalry of medieval knights: heroism and self-sacrifice could be just as noble in the grey obscurity of ordinary people in a little country town.' (Banffy, They were found wanting, 398)

They've been great, the Banffy triptych; I don't know why I failed to finish them when I read the first book some years ago. Still, a wrong has been rectified - another triumph for the project. Their wonderfully evocative of a very appealing and fascinating time at the turn of the century when the Habsburg Empire was essentially doomed by forces within it that would themselves be doomed by the outcome. Hungary is the most obvious, but I imagine the Croatian nobility and the Bohemians were pretty surprised how it all panned out as well. The melancholy of the age is echoed by the plot, which, in it's final denouement, just stays on the right side of genuine sadness rather than melodrama. Obviously autobiographical, and none the worse for that, while also well drawn and most moving. I think this middle book the best of the three; and I just need to persuade A that we need a trip to Transylvania now.