Oct 20 2007
Tax and waste
It comes as no surprise to discover the government is on another tax grab, this time through a backdoor increase in National Insurance on middle income groups.
The sad truth about Gordon Brown is he does believe that you make public services better by spending more and more. Faced with the growing evidence that they are still not offering good enough services despite all the spending, he simply ups the spend.
He has not learned what Tony Blair had grasped before he left office - you need to spend wisely, and you have to reform the way the leading public services are run if you are to get value for the extra cash. Never has so much been spent in the NHS than is spent today, and never have so many caught dangerous hospital acquired infections as are caught today. Mr Brown needs to ask himself a few tough questions about how this has come about.
John Redwood has been the Member of Parliament for Wokingham since 1987. First attending Kent College, Canterbury, he graduated from Magdalen College...
Actually, Blair claimed to have understood it in 1997. He said something along the lines of “it’s not how much you spend but how you spend it”. He forgot by about 1999 and then Brown took charge of domestic policy.
Back to the EU for a moment if you don’t mind: I think people would be a lot more happy about EU integration if there was some mechanism for voters to have a say on EU policy. At the moment it’s the national governments who can push to change direction but if actual voters could kick out the Commission or at least if the Parliament could veto proposals it would feel a lot more democratic.
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I have a feeling that Middle England has stopped listening to Gordon Brown and his acolytes.
- the Tories inheritance/stamp duty proposals appealed to Middle England because they were *simple*. Everything Gordan Brown does seems very convoluted.
- “our nhs”. People are terrified of going into an “our nhs” hospital and catching some strange disease. They want to know after billions of pounds of expenditure where has the money gone.
- schools. Similarly, when looking at core results in Maths, English, Sciences and Foreign languages, the results have not risen as fast as they should have - given the expenditure.
The Tories are right to look abroad for inspiration. Swedish schools, Wisconsin welfare and even, how do other countries manage health care. Compulsory social insurance?
Heres an idea for a *simple* Tory policy on schools. Every secondary school student is alllocated
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