Today’s strikes is the start of the unions flexing their new found power and influence, and long may it last, well…until 2010 anyway. Lots of strikes in the lead up to the next election damages Labour as much as the unions.

Mr Brown and Mr Darling can say they will cut public spending in real terms until they are blue in the face, but there are two major hurdles for them.

First, it goes against the ingrained belief in the benefit of big government which is the very basis of their politics.

Secondly, the union leaders will not allow it. After many years in the relative wilderness there is at last an opportunity for a new generation of union barons to emerge with real power. The Labour Party needs their money and there is still no such thing as a free lunch.

As Mr Craig has commented above, and you have said yourself, a freeze on non-essential public sector recruitment is a simple course which would be a start, but how would it work in practice if Mr Brown tried to do it? How long would it be before the unions object to their members being required to transfer jobs to fill vacancies? How long then before Mr Brown
has to agree to new recruitment to keep his party from bankruptcy?

Better that they do not try because then an incoming replacement government would have a freer hand.

Longer term raising the basic personal allowance to £14,000 p/a so that means tested welfare created dependency can be ended by abandoning the insane system of taking money off of the poor via tax and then handing it back in complex handouts is the right goal . You could slash poverty rates & the number of penpushers needed to manage such a complex scheme that causes vast amounts of hardship & distress and has high admin overheads and a low level of success . When a person on a low or modest income earns more we should reward their success with a bigger personal allowance – not clawing the cash back via poverty creating credits .

Do the over-paid Guardian readers running the BBC really care about the poor or do they just regard them as fodder to bribe with welfare dependency so that they vote Labour ?

Selling off the BBC to fund a once off tax refund to give our faltering economy a boost sounds more sensible than a Poll Tax to finance an out of date white elephant of dubious value in the modern world . I mainly watch Sky or DVD – why should I or anyother such person fund liberal left propaganda when we prudently decide to give such rubbish the elbow ? All basic rate payers could get £240 p/a as selling off the BBC would raise about enough to fund a rebate worth twice the Brown-Darling Bribe .

In the longer term we need the top rate of tax to fall by 25% from 40p to 30p and a top rate threshold of about £60,000 p/a (linked to earnings or prices whichever is greater ) just to encourage enterprise at a time of cut throat global tax competition when jobs & business flee Labour’s anti- enterprise regime and our long term prospects suffer . The basic personal allowance should be £14,000 p/a for all taxpayers ( linked to prices or earnings whichever rises by more ) . A short term stimulus and longer term plans to reduce the size of the state and bring down income taxes would prove that the Tories are a modern Party capable of learning from abroad about how to improve the UK’s economic prospects by applying timeless Conservative principles to a modern age .

The Bush tax refunds have worked in the US and smaller government and lower taxes have worked a treat in Eastern Europe . If coupled with a 14p a litre fuel duty cut paid for from the extra tax revenue from the North Sea Oil taxes caused by higher prices family budgets would be less strained . Would Panorama like to investigate that ?

Those who were there will know that it would be impossible to stage that race in the UK; health and safety would never allow it. The French are highly taxed, as we are, but you can see where the money has been spent on the national infrastructure.

Your comments are spot on as usual. I have been trying to fathom where the pay-off to the trade unions is in the new Employment Bill. There has to be a trick in there somewhere to launder taxpayer’s money into the unions and on to the Labour Party coffers. But; I hear this morning that there are £115 billion of government contracts on offer which have a trade union membership requirement attached to the contract specification. That must be how they are going to rip us off. Keep an eye on this for us John.

I see that Redwood; DD and IDS are now the “big three” outside the Cameron tent! I suspect there are a few more that will join you; but, don’t let them kick out the tent pegs. There is only parking for one tent for now.

As others have said, the BBC is the elephant in the room in today’s media. It has to be cut back to something that fulfils a basic public sector mandate. With £2.7 billion from the television tax and £1.1 billion from programme sales, it is smothering the private sector. Some may have noticed that its foreign services – World News television for instance – are not that good.

One thing is certain, by 2010; the UK will be a busted flush. You are going to have a hell of a job getting the nations finances back on track. As far as I can tell, this government will spend over £600 billion of our £1400 billion market price GDP this year. The “off balance sheet” stuff is probably adding £70 billion to the “socialised economy” bill. Keep telling the voters, every chance you get, why they are not as well off as they should be by now.

Machiavilli said that if you are going to disposess people better to do it quickly & thoroughly to a small number than to have the majority bear a lesser burden. This may not be entirely fair but it works.

You need to reverse this trend, and quickly.

Start asking difficult questions repeatedly of Government ministers on the lines of “Why, if we’re so tight for cash did we give 825million pounds to India over the next 3 years; India, a country so rich it has nuclear weapons and a space programme?”

When the usual self-serving guff about developmental aid comes up, bounce back with an example of how many hospitals (or whatever) this package could have bought us. Finish up by asking if Gordon is working for the UK or for India.

Slightly more dangerously, have a crack at Gordon on membership of the EU. The electorate of pretty much all EU countries is overwhelmingly euroskeptic (if you don’t believe me, go talk to your own constituents…) and the UK is more euroskeptic than most EU countries. Basically, we’re being ripped off by an unaccountable body which Labour are seemingly determined to support for no logical reason we can see, other than the EU being a lovely rich sinecure for failed UK politicians (Kinnock, Mandelson and their ilk).

It might actually be a good idea to have a really good talk about the EU before you have to fight an election. The electorate you serve is euroskeptic and given a referendum on EU membership, would likely vote to get the UK out of full EU membership and into associate membership of some kind. Now, you serve the electorate so let’s hear some good financial reasons for being members of an organisation so corrupt that its own tame accountancy body has not signed off the accounts for over a decade.

Of course, the Tories will win the next election here. However, instead of a win a firm promise of a referendum on EU membership would firstly get you a landslide victory, and secondly would put to bed the membership issue once and for all.

http://lettersfromatory.wordpress.com

Reply: No need to do that – just stop replacing and recrutiing and the numbers across the public sector will drop off quite quickly

The economy is a subject most people only vaguely understand, but that understanding is now growing and allied to a general feeling that common sense in public spending has deserted Labour, if it ever had it, is the key to Tory fortunes.

Why will Cameron not gain his million plus votes in the whole of the UK by scrapping the BBC licence tax? An announcement that within five years the licence tax would be scrapped and BBC forced to earn its crust would see great swathes of the public swing behind the Tories. We are now in the digital age and most people could not care less about the BBC.

I fully agree, and what irritates me no end is to see John Major come onto the TV boasting that it was the ERM which set us on the growth path, forgetting to mention that it was only when we were kicked out of the ERM that our economy began its recovery, something he fought tooth and nail to avoid, which of course the EUpile BBC doesn’t care to question him on, preferring instead to present him as some sort of wise sage.

I also agree with you about the BBC’s line, where they claim all Government spending is absolutely necessary, and if you dare to cut just a few pounds from it the result will be to cancel all heart operations. I am just sorry the Conservative high command aren’t rubbishing it, and don’t come to these interviews with arm full of examples of Government waste. Only yesterday we had the Treasury select committee say that billions were being stolen from Brown’s tax credit system, if Cameron pointed this out it would very quickly shut the BBC up, after all obscene waste is something they should know a lot about at the BBC.