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Source: (consider it)
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Thread: Cameron discovers cutting things leads to things being cut
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Crœsos
Shipmate
# 238
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Posted
From a less polite article from the opinion pages of the Guardian:
quote:
Explaining the issue gently, as if to a slow learner, the council leader, Ian Hudspeth, points out that the council has already culled its back-office functions, slashing 40% of its most senior staff and 2,800 jobs in total, with the result that it now spends less on these roles than most other counties. He explains that he has already flogged all the property he can lay hands on, but would like to remind the prime minister that using the income from these sales to pay for the council’s running costs “is neither legal, nor sustainable in the long-term since they are one-off receipts”.
As for Cameron’s claim about government grants, Hudspeth comments: “I cannot accept your description of a drop in funding of £72m or 37% as a ‘slight fall’.”
It seems to be an article of faith amongst the fiscal restraint types that there is always a lot that can be cut from the budget without affecting anything. Because this is always believed to be so, the exact details of what cuts would entail never have to be examined.
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Humani nil a me alienum puto
Posts: 10706 | From: Sardis, Lydia | Registered: May 2001
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Schroedinger's cat
Ship's cool cat
# 64
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Posted
When I say "We're all in this together", I don't mean that you should be cutting things that I want. Please get rid of things that other people want, because I am rich.
The obnoxiously vile piece of excrement who calls himself our prime minister genuinely does seem to believe that the purpose of money is for him and his cronies to hoard, not to actually make things happen for everyone.
If I was in charge of the council, I would cut everything around Camerons home, and then charge all of the local residents if they want the services. "Oh, you want your rubbish collected every week, not every fortnight? That'll be £100 each per extra collection, thank you."
I do think Monbiots conclusion has some validity: Cameron sleeps at night because he is wilfully ignorant of the effect of what he does. He, and his colleagues, see figures on a spreadsheet, not people dying. He has been in politics so long, and hob-nobbing with the wealthy so long, he no longer understands that most people are not fabulously wealthy.
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Blog
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Lord may all my hard times be healing times
take out this broken heart and renew my mind.
Posts: 18859 | From: At the bottom of a deep dark well. | Registered: May 2001
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JonahMan
Shipmate
# 12126
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Posted
It's his ignorance of what the cuts actually are that I find the most worrying - mistaking the annual cut for the total is really a very basic mistake that suggests he really doesn't care.
For what it's worth, I think this reflects his attitude. No doubt there will be some huffing and puffing but in the end nothing will change, and cuts will continue to be made. Perhaps they will shift some of the cuts away from wealthy rural areas (those these are not without problems) towards inner cities, about which he undoubtedly cares even less.
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Thank God for the aged
And old age itself, and illness and the grave
For when you're old, or ill and particularly in the coffin
It's no trouble to behave
Posts: 914 | From: Planet Zog | Registered: Dec 2006
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Doc Tor
Deepest Red
# 9748
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Posted
I've already seen the suggestion that Corbyn's next PMQs will include: "I've a letter here from Dave in Oxfordshire, who's worried about cuts to his local services..."
I would so do that.
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Forward the New Republic
Posts: 9131 | From: Ultima Thule | Registered: Jul 2005
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alienfromzog
Ship's Alien
# 5327
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by Doc Tor:
I've already seen the suggestion that Corbyn's next PMQs will include: "I've a letter here from Dave in Oxfordshire, who's worried about cuts to his local services..."
I would so do that.
Genius ![[Overused]](graemlins/notworthy.gif)
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Everyone is entitled to his own opinion, but not his own facts.
[Sen. D.P.Moynihan]
An Alien's View of Earth - my blog (or vanity exercise...)
Posts: 2150 | From: Zog, obviously! Straight past Alpha Centauri, 2nd planet on the left... | Registered: Dec 2003
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Sipech
Shipmate
# 16870
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by Doc Tor:
I've already seen the suggestion that Corbyn's next PMQs will include: "I've a letter here from Dave in Oxfordshire, who's worried about cuts to his local services..."
I would so do that.
I was thinking more along the lines of "Does the prime minister agree with the concerns raised by the honourable member for Witney that the governments cuts to local government are adversely affecting front line services, in spite of assurances given to this house that they would not?"
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I try to be self-deprecating; I'm just not very good at it.
Twitter: http://twitter.com/TheAlethiophile
Posts: 3791 | From: On the corporate ladder | Registered: Jan 2012
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Tubbs
Miss Congeniality
# 440
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by Sipech:
quote:
Originally posted by Doc Tor:
I've already seen the suggestion that Corbyn's next PMQs will include: "I've a letter here from Dave in Oxfordshire, who's worried about cuts to his local services..."
I would so do that.
I was thinking more along the lines of "Does the prime minister agree with the concerns raised by the honourable member for Witney that the governments cuts to local government are adversely affecting front line services, in spite of assurances given to this house that they would not?"
Love it!
Tubbs
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"It's better to keep your mouth shut and be thought a fool than open it up and remove all doubt" - Dennis Thatcher. My blog. Decide for yourself which I am
Posts: 12701 | From: Someplace strange | Registered: Jun 2001
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Adeodatus
Shipmate
# 4992
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Posted
... And of course the ministerial code dictates that Dodgy Dave must scrupulously separate his duties as Prime Minister from his concerns as MP for Witney! ![[Big Grin]](biggrin.gif)
Originally posted by the Grauniad, courtesy of Croesos: quote:
Explaining the issue gently, as if to a slow learner, the council leader, Ian Hudspeth, points out that the council has already culled its back-office functions, slashing 40% of its most senior staff and 2,800 jobs in total, with the result that it now spends less on these roles than most other counties.
Why "as if"?
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"What is broken, repair with gold."
Posts: 9779 | From: Manchester | Registered: Sep 2003
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orfeo
Ship's Musical Counterpoint
# 13878
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by alienfromzog:
And again...
![[Roll Eyes]](rolleyes.gif)
"No 10 said the prime minister believed it was possible reduce costs without affecting front-line, high-quality public services."
Then the prime minister is an idiot living in an ivory tower.
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Technology has brought us all closer together. Turns out a lot of the people you meet as a result are complete idiots.
Posts: 18173 | From: Under | Registered: Jul 2008
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Sioni Sais
Shipmate
# 5713
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by orfeo:
quote:
Originally posted by alienfromzog:
And again...
"No 10 said the prime minister believed it was possible reduce costs without affecting front-line, high-quality public services."
Then the prime minister is an idiot living in an ivory tower.
The Queen in Alice Through the Looking Glass could believe "as many as six impossible things before breakfast", so Cameron has some way to go yet.
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"He isn't Doctor Who, he's The Doctor"
(Paul Sinha, BBC)
Posts: 24276 | From: Newport, Wales | Registered: Apr 2004
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Touchstone
Shipmate
# 3560
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Posted
I think Cameron is now running on cruise control. Whatever brains he may possess are enjoying a bit of a rest before he applies them to the onerous task of making shitloads of dosh as ex-prime ministers are wont to do, and he's handed over the day-to-day stuff to George Osborne.
Possibly his conscience is occasionally pricked and there may be a conversation along the following lines:
DC: I say Gidders, our policies seem to be causing considerable distress to quite significant numbers of people.
GO: That is the general idea. Are any of these people likely to vote Conservative, or indeed vote at all now we've purged the electoral register of feckless scroungers?
DC: Err, no, I suppose not.
GO: Well then.
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Jez we did hand the next election to the Tories on a plate!
Posts: 163 | From: Somewhere west of Bristol | Registered: Nov 2002
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Penny S
Shipmate
# 14768
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by Sioni Sais:
quote:
Originally posted by orfeo:
quote:
Originally posted by alienfromzog:
And again...
"No 10 said the prime minister believed it was possible reduce costs without affecting front-line, high-quality public services."
Then the prime minister is an idiot living in an ivory tower.
The Queen in Alice Through the Looking Glass could believe "as many as six impossible things before breakfast", so Cameron has some way to go yet.
I gather that one of Cameron's tutors at Oxford has been reported as saying that he was the most intelligent student he had known. Which does not say much for the recruitment to politics, philosophy and economics courses at that university.
[ 14. November 2015, 12:26: Message edited by: Penny S ]
Posts: 5833 | Registered: May 2009
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Belle Ringer
Shipmate
# 13379
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Posted
I have had work colleagues who genuinely believe any service they personally don't need, no one needs. If he doesn't need a soup kitchen, no one legitimately needs one, it's a wasteful boondoggle.
If he never walks into a public library, if he can retire comfortably without a government pension, these are wasteful public expenditures. If he can afford a private doctor, no one needs a public health service.
Genuine unawareness that not everyone is as well off as he. If someone does need help, it's because the needy person must have wasted their money or refused to work a job or is on drugs, and therefore doesn't deserve any help. ("All poor are undeserving poor. They are poor because they refuse to work.")
I don't know how you open someone's eyes to a broader reality.
Posts: 5830 | From: Texas | Registered: Jan 2008
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Sioni Sais
Shipmate
# 5713
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Posted
Do you think Cameron will "do a Wilson" and quit No. 10 in a hurry? Wilson was aware that he was losing his faculties, but he was famously smart and despite a first-class degree from Oxford, I don't think Cameron is of that calibre.
I'm sure he wouldn't want to be remembered as the man who split the Conservative Party over Europe. The last man to split that party was Sir Robert Peel, over the Corn Laws which, like the EU, were designed to favour producers inside a defined market against those outside.
ETA: Penny S. Cameron's tutor could well be damning with faint prise. My Mum was fond of saying "How can anyone be so intelligent and act so stupid?" Moreover, greed and selfishness usually outweigh intelligence.
[ 14. November 2015, 12:35: Message edited by: Sioni Sais ]
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"He isn't Doctor Who, he's The Doctor"
(Paul Sinha, BBC)
Posts: 24276 | From: Newport, Wales | Registered: Apr 2004
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Penny S
Shipmate
# 14768
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Posted
I keep remembering the medieval story of the king of Sicily who was replaced by the Archangel Gabriel for a year, so that he could see what the problems of the outcasts were. And that the composers of that story knew full well that it wasn't going to happen, however much it was needed to happen. That the mighty would never wake in the place of the poor and learn what it was like.
PPE should include field trips south of Magdalen Bridge along the Cowley Road, and to the Blackbird Leys estate, and not merely, as I have been told, to vandalise restaurants.
Edited after reading Sioni Sais. Possible, I suppose. And I suppose it could depend on the definition of intelligence. I have my doubts about the sort measured by Mensa tests, for example. I've never met anyone claiming membership of that organisation who has stayed in it after the initial year, who had any sort of what I would call social intelligence.
[ 14. November 2015, 12:41: Message edited by: Penny S ]
Posts: 5833 | Registered: May 2009
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Schroedinger's cat
Ship's cool cat
# 64
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Posted
Erm, several years mensan here.
Socially inept idiot too. It does measure a form of intelligence, but we fully accept that it is not the only form. It is for people with unusually high IQs, not for people who think they are clever.
Cameron is clearly not particularly clever. He may have some academic smarts, be able to write good essays, but that doesn't mean that he is clever in any real sense. It doesn't mean that he understands anything at all, and the evidence of his action is that he has no understanding of what he does. He acts like he has read some theories about what the right thing to do is, and implements that irrespective of the impact or effect.
As a PhD student, I have learnt that you need to read ideas, understand what they mean, how they relate, what might work and not work about them, and then be able to analyse whether they are right. He has demonstrated that he is unable to do that.
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Blog
Music for your enjoyment
Lord may all my hard times be healing times
take out this broken heart and renew my mind.
Posts: 18859 | From: At the bottom of a deep dark well. | Registered: May 2001
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Touchstone
Shipmate
# 3560
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by Belle Ringer:
I have had work colleagues who genuinely believe any service they personally don't need, no one needs. If he doesn't need a soup kitchen, no one legitimately needs one, it's a wasteful boondoggle.
If he never walks into a public library, if he can retire comfortably without a government pension, these are wasteful public expenditures. If he can afford a private doctor, no one needs a public health service.
Genuine unawareness that not everyone is as well off as he. If someone does need help, it's because the needy person must have wasted their money or refused to work a job or is on drugs, and therefore doesn't deserve any help. ("All poor are undeserving poor. They are poor because they refuse to work.")
I don't know how you open someone's eyes to a broader reality.
I think this is becoming the dominant political opinion in this country. Public spending not being spent on me is a wasteful extravagance. It results in UKIP's contortions in seeking to be uber-thatcherites and protecters of welfare for their core voters.
Thing is, it is a self-reinforcing cycle: as spending is cut, fewer people benefit from it and more become opposed to it.
Sorry that wasn't very hellish. BASTARDS!!
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Jez we did hand the next election to the Tories on a plate!
Posts: 163 | From: Somewhere west of Bristol | Registered: Nov 2002
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Penny S
Shipmate
# 14768
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by Schroedinger's cat:
Erm, several years mensan here.
As a PhD student, I have learnt that you need to read ideas, understand what they mean, how they relate, what might work and not work about them, and then be able to analyse whether they are right. He has demonstrated that he is unable to do that.
The critical thing in your case is that you don't constantly make sure that everyone knows you are a mensan. I didn't know. I tried very hard to construct the sentence to exclude those I didn't know about. I must know a number of people who don't shout about it.
On the other hand, I've had a number of run-ins with people who I did know about and who were more than socially inept. In fact, all the people, except two women who left, have been people I would want to avoid. (One seemed to think that his high score entitled him to plagiarise a non-member with a PhD. Not sure what that shows about his intelligence.)
PhDs are a much more useful measure of intelligence, I think. And I agree with you on that. And most of them don't involve damaging people in the experimental stages.
Posts: 5833 | Registered: May 2009
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Touchstone
Shipmate
# 3560
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by Schroedinger's cat:
Erm, several years mensan here.
Socially inept idiot too. It does measure a form of intelligence, but we fully accept that it is not the only form. It is for people with unusually high IQs, not for people who think they are clever.
Cameron is clearly not particularly clever. He may have some academic smarts, be able to write good essays, but that doesn't mean that he is clever in any real sense. It doesn't mean that he understands anything at all, and the evidence of his action is that he has no understanding of what he does. He acts like he has read some theories about what the right thing to do is, and implements that irrespective of the impact or effect.
As a PhD student, I have learnt that you need to read ideas, understand what they mean, how they relate, what might work and not work about them, and then be able to analyse whether they are right. He has demonstrated that he is unable to do that.
Veering totally off topic, but wtf is a mensan? What does that first sentence even mean?
The cleverest people I've ever met have been engineers, who rarely bother with PhDs, considering them a waste of time that could be spent doing proper work. Before people shout "but they're so one-sided!" or some such bollocks, some of those engineers are pretty mean musicians too.
Me, I'm just averagely bright. At least Dave and I have that in common.
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Jez we did hand the next election to the Tories on a plate!
Posts: 163 | From: Somewhere west of Bristol | Registered: Nov 2002
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Lucia
Looking for light
# 15201
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Posted
A mensan I would presume to be a member of Mensa.
Posts: 1075 | From: Nigh golden stone and spires | Registered: Oct 2009
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Touchstone
Shipmate
# 3560
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Posted
As in mensa sana in corpore sano?
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Jez we did hand the next election to the Tories on a plate!
Posts: 163 | From: Somewhere west of Bristol | Registered: Nov 2002
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Penny S
Shipmate
# 14768
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Posted
I think, from reading stuff I wasn't supposed to see, that originally, before some psychologist (Cyril Burt) got hold of it for experimental purposes, the idea behind it was a sort of order of people who would use their intelligence to do good, in the manner of the Knights of the Round Table, so the name was a double pun on mind and table. But I might have imagined it.
And Cameron has also written to his Chief Constable or similar to complain about police cuts.
[ 18. November 2015, 18:15: Message edited by: Penny S ]
Posts: 5833 | Registered: May 2009
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Touchstone
Shipmate
# 3560
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Posted
Right now the most effective opposition to the government seems to be the Prime Minister. Perhaps he's planning to stand against himself on an anti-austerity platform.
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Jez we did hand the next election to the Tories on a plate!
Posts: 163 | From: Somewhere west of Bristol | Registered: Nov 2002
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Schroedinger's cat
Ship's cool cat
# 64
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Posted
Mensa is for people with high IQs. PhDs are for people who can do academic research. Neither are definitively indicators of intelligence. They are indicators of certain skills. You can be intelligent without either of those.
Cameron shows by his actions that he is not thinking well, and he is in a position where he needs to be thinking well and clearly, knowing the impacts of what he and his government do. That is crucial. He doesn't do it.
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Blog
Music for your enjoyment
Lord may all my hard times be healing times
take out this broken heart and renew my mind.
Posts: 18859 | From: At the bottom of a deep dark well. | Registered: May 2001
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Doublethink.
Ship's Foolwise Unperson
# 1984
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Posted
IQ is by definition an indicator of general intelligence, that is the entire point of it.
It is however not an indicator of social or moral understanding.
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All political thinking for years past has been vitiated in the same way. People can foresee the future only when it coincides with their own wishes, and the most grossly obvious facts can be ignored when they are unwelcome. George Orwell
Posts: 19219 | From: Erehwon | Registered: Aug 2005
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