I know, I know - so far my blogging history makes it sound like I'm just bitching about Channel 4's political programming, but I have a valid reason for wondering what the processes were behind the commissioning of Selling Off Britain. The premise behind the show was to select certain assets owned by the state and sell them off, in an attempt to garner currency and heal the deficit. Now, aside from one of the guests explaining why it doesn't work like this - for reasons I still don't fully understand - one of the problems behind such a plan exists in precedent. There has been, in the last forty years, another example of the state selling off assets in order to try and bolster its economy. There were, of course, considerable differences between the privatisation of our national utility networks and the proposals lain down by Krishnan Guru-Murthy, the presenter of last night's programme. Selling off our gas and electricity grids were ultimately passed on to public limited companies, and shares were sold off bit by bit to investors. Selling the Birmingham City Council building would be a straight sell to the highest bidder.
There are reasons why people don't like Thatcher. She destroyed our primary industrial sector; left millions unemployed with no alternative work; introduced fees to higher education making it more difficult for the unemployed to retrain; and piled resources into a war that no matter how noble cost the taxpayer millions. Looking back, it is hard to ignore the irony that the British public campaigned against Maggie Thatcher for attempting to alleviate the national debt, but boosted her popularity ratings when she spent that money waging a war for a group of islands barely significant to the modern commonwealth. Yes, her time in office did have some advantages: she was instrumental in preserving British sovereignty - and by extension, other European nations' - in the European Economic Community (now the EU), and potentially stopping the UK from slipping into some sort of deficit by trying to prop up the coal and steel industries. My beef with Margaret Thatcher is her disregard for the potential unemployment and refusal to do anything about it. That alone marks her out as being one of the worst 20th+ Century Prime Ministers this country has had. For me.
In comparison, selling the NEC or parliamentary members clubs is an even more short term solution. I almost had a coronary when they suggested selling the British Armed Forces. Whilst we may rely on Private Military Corporations at times in modern warfare, I'm not sure I like the idea anyway let alone have them be in charge of our national defences. I'll fully admit that there are some things our military could do without. A £280 million nuclear deterrent consisting of 100+ active warheads is one of them. When it comes to nuclear warfare, any number above 1 is generally considered reason enough not to attack somebody. The concept of a Ministry of Defence is rather absurd, when it operates such potent first strike weapons.
As I said to my flatmates yesterday evening, selling off bits of Britain isn't going to solve anything. It'll create a short term solution that'll be that much harder to rectify years down the line. Unless something is changed about the core functionality of a national - or even global - economy, these things will continue to happen, no matter how many restrictions or regulations a government tries to impose on its corporations. The latter entity will find ways of manipulating the markets and the legal system to create bigger profits, and if necessary, can bribe and corrupt a government to ignore them when they flout legal authority.
Get rid of credit. A debit-based economy doesn't have these problems because it operates purely on existing money, the quantity of which can be adjusted every year when the government agency handling receipts and expenses - to distance the accounting from the central hub of lawmakers - realises that the national income is not proportionate to the cost of national maintenance. There are complications to this, admittedly, but it's not half as complicated or manipulative as the economy base we currently practise. It also makes the government and civil service less corruptible, and the corporations, banks and big businesses more managable.
I'm not saying I have all the answers, the above is purely theoretical, and I do not have the ability to actually test it practically. But I know I'm bound to have somebody say to me eventually;
"Well, come on then, if you're so critical of the way things are at the moment, what's your brilliant solution, genius?"
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