Magic money trees and free lunches.
When politicians tell us the hard truths that there are no magic money trees and no free lunches many do not want to believe them. In recent years a so called independent Central Bank wrongly created a money tree called Quantitative easing. It allowed government egged on by all the Opposition parties to spend and borrow a fortune to lock down the country for too long and pay people for doing nothing. It led to a predictable high inflation, vindicating those of us who warned against Latin American style government finances paid for by a printing press in the Bank.
It would be more reassuring if more officials from the Bank and Treasury would speak out against a repeat of the Magic Money Tree experiment. Instead when the Bank Committee yesterday met it did not even discuss and comment on its damaging bond sales programme, apparently oblivious to its importance to money policy, fiscal policy and the state of the economy.Getting off dependence on the magic money tree is coming at huge cost to taxpayers which the Bank top people will not even talk about.
Politicians occasionally hit back against disgruntled voters expressing anger at bad government. They complain the public want both lower taxes and better services. They say the public think there is a free lunch.
I think the public are right to want lower taxes and better services. They sense the public sector is awash with money and recruits many extra people year after year. It would not be a free lunch if the public sector spent its money more wisely, employed fewer people, and helped them work smarter. That is what all good private sector businesses try to do. It would be a better value lunch for the hard pressed customers, the taxpayers.
It is bizarre that UK public sector productivity is no higher today than in 1997. That’s despite 28 years of big investments in computing by all parts of government, years of more training and promotions in the civil service and wider administration of the public sector. So why has none of this resulted in efficiency gains to match those of the private sector? Big employing departments like tax collection and benefit spending were obvious beneficiaries of the greater productivity putting more on computer and on line could bring. Productivity fell under Labour 1997-2010 as they spent more and hired more staff. It rose a bit under the Conservatives 2010-19, as they tried to get some better value out of the public sector. It fell disastrously over covid lockdowns and still has not properly recovered despite heavy spending on remote working, on line meetings, better data handling and now AI.
Working away to capture the possible productivity gains in the public sector would give us a trend line of at least 1% gains in productivity a year. Some would say the public sector in catch up mode should be able to achieve 2% a year. At 1% a year after five years the public sector would cost £30bn less to run the current level of services. That would be a handsome free lunch, allowing service improvements and tax cuts without borrowing more.
Surely public sector managers, now well remunerated and plentiful, could achieve this? Why aren’t their bonuses dependent on it? Where are the plans to amalgamate posts and improve jobs as people leave? All this can be done without any compulsory redundancies as staff numbers fall around 7% a year if you do not replace them by external recruitment.
Sent from Outlook for iOS
November 7, 2025
Good Morning,
Perhaps we should look at this top down in the patrician Starmer method, and compare UK with Europe. When we look at the EU data, the Euro area government spending to GDP is about 49%, whereas the UK is about 44.5%.
See here: https://tradingeconomics.com/country-list/government-spending-to-gdp?continent=europe
So one could say the UK is undershooting its expenditure target, in fact in Starmer world, we really are not spending money we don’t earn fast enough. So to get up to the EU average, to bring us into line with the EU and comply with our ‘non compete’ obligation under the Tory Brexit withdrawal agreement, we really have to tax and spend more.
Don’t expect any cost cutting from Ms Reeves.
November 7, 2025
Interesting looking at the National grid. We’ve had a few days where wind and solar have been generating aboutv70% of demand. Today we’ve had a high pressure settlement over the country and it’s now down at 10%. Gas and nuclear are providing 60% no doubt increasing as the day progresses. Who on earth would invest in CCGT plants under such circumstances.
November 7, 2025
My local GP surgery does not answer the phone. I have got a message ‘the system is busy, please try later’ before being cut off.
The only way to contact them is to go to the surgery, or contact them via various internet options – anima, NHS etc. Neither of these is ideal. You may not be able to get to the surgery. You may not have the internet or the patience to go through the routines with passwords and texted codes to get into the systems.
The practice clocking in system no longer works. That is date of birth, sex and confirmation of your name. When you ask at reception you find the time of the appointment has been moved. I have been asked to attend tests only to find I was not eligible at the surgery. It was to predict heart issues. Those taking statins are excluded. So it is a complete shambles.
Computerisation has only made matters worse. Fortunately I am in good health but it must be a nightmare for the seriously ill.
I don’t see any sign that the practise is bothered. One member told me funding cuts was the cause.
November 7, 2025
They might as well have Carol on reception to tell me ‘The computer says”No”’.
It would be cheaper.
November 7, 2025
You could be jolly lucky that you can’t contact them. I’m definitely never reverting to the medical profession in the U.K. if I have time I will go privately to South Africa where their hospitals, often manned by native British people, are excellent.
November 7, 2025
Of course your correct in all uou say but you don’t acknowledge that all major parties over the past 20 years have been left wing proponents of big government.
We have dozens of new Quangos which cost a fortune and achieve very little
We have a so called independent central bank which undermines government policy and Chancellors who are basically illiterate.
There needs to be a clear out of the old regime much like Trump is doing in the USA. We only have one last chance
Reply I made clear my Opposition to excess spending, quangos and 3rd tranche of QE under last govt, and voted against lockdown measures which ballooned spending.m
November 7, 2025
So 2TK acknowledged in Brazil that the consensus for net stupid had gone but declared that Britain was all in and would carry on regardless.
Is there any more blatant admission that he is working for an outside body to the detriment of Britain
The man’s a fraud.
November 7, 2025
Just keep repeating…..’the science is settled……the science is settled…..the science is settled…’
It won’t change anything, but it might get you committed where they’ll give you lots of happy drugs to make you not worry any more. See you there!
November 7, 2025
Unfortunately so is Prince William and his deluded father.
November 7, 2025
John, perhaps you should republish your book … “third way – which way”
But I doubt anyone in this government will read it let alone head the advice, they are driven by fantasy land ideologies not by any sense of responsibility to the citizens of this country.
November 7, 2025
“It fell disastrously over covid lockdowns and still has not properly recovered despite heavy spending on remote working,” – or more likely due to this, I am as guilty as most on days of remote working and try and avoid unless I have clearly defined tasks. At least I recognise this!
Reply I am more productive working at home. Some people need managing to ensure they are also more productive when opting for home working.
November 7, 2025
Reply-Reply
You may be more productive at home John, but many are not.
Firstly it depends upon what job you are doing, what equipment and facilities you have at home (dedicated office space as an example) how many others are also at home causing a distraction, small children, animals, but above all your own personality.
November 7, 2025
There are tasks that suit remote working and tasks that suit in person collaboration. There is also the person.
Remote working, some of the time is a fine tool for productivity in the right hands. It is not a blanket approach.
November 7, 2025
What annoys me is that they think we are stupid and will swallow any rubbish. The fact that the BBC slavishly repeats their press releases does not make them right.
We can see laziness, overstaffing and plenty of errors in the public sector with our own eyes and ears.
Many services are public-facing so what is the point in the government and many councils telling us how short of staff they are?
A good place to start is to tell – and face up to – the truth
November 7, 2025
I do not really resent the fee though it is clear unfair competition buy certainly get reasonable value we have four currently in the house and I would pay that just for the bits of Radio three and four I listen too.
I do however resent their endless lefty, woke, big state, pro EU, climate alarmist, pro open door immigration agenda! Though it is quite interesting seeing just how biased they can be. Someone disciplined by the. for sensible correcting “pregnant people” to “pregnant women” today it seems.
November 7, 2025
BBC bias quantified….see the link
https://cps.org.uk/wp-content/uploads/2021/07/130814102945-BBCBiasOliverLathamfc.pdf
It’s not current but it doesn’t matter as the nightmare we are living in right now is a culmination of years of BBC/Guardian propaganda where a large minority of people have been radicalised and many of those are now in senior positions in the civil service and government.
November 7, 2025
+1
November 7, 2025
The problem with Government, is that they continually make and change and introduce more and more rules and regulations, which then need to be managed and supervised.
Every Department involved then expands to fill the so called management and supervision of such.
Just look at how complex our Taxation and Benefits system is now, does anyone really understand either fully ?
Even our Deputy Prime Minister and Chancellor have failed to understand the rules recently, with all of the knowledge that surrounds and is available to them.
Now we have another change on Education.
This week 477 Government people taken to COP30, with the Mayor of London in addition taking his own specialist team, just imagine the expense.
November 7, 2025
Actually it’s worse than that. Two government departments have now defined ‘the owner’ of a property as someone other than the title holder. One department issued a vacant business rates rebate to my tenant because they defined the tenant as ‘the owner’.
Now the VOA insist that to be able to check their current and new business rates valuations on my commercial properties (which I ‘claimed’ online years ago) I have to prove that I am the owner, they then proceed to inform me that providing a business rates invoice will prove ownership. But it’s the tenants who pay the business rates and therefore have the invoices.
This is how ‘hijacking of buildings’ occurs in South Africa. It a real battle to get your property returned to you.
November 7, 2025
When was the last time a senior politician in Government told us that there is no such thing as a Free Lunch?
It was probably you, Sir John, or Mrs Thatcher.
From Major onwards we have had Globalists in Government who were not interested in governing the UK and instead have been implementing a Grand Project to outsource our governance to International Institutions. The Covid Tyranny was managed and controlled by those International Institutions: Johnson/the Quad simply followed the Instructions.
It was the first, or at least the most obvious, step in implementing The Great Reset, as Charles Windsor, then Prince of Wales, explained.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jeLhZqNda2w
November 7, 2025
+1
November 7, 2025
Well the nearest things we have to a free money tree are deregulation and to stop doing actively harmful and damaging things. Stop paying & encouraging people to be feckless, start to deter crime, low skilled legal and illegal immigration and the feckless from living off the backs of others. Release essentially parasitic workers to get real and productive jobs, scrap net zero, stop rigging markets like education, energy, banking, transport, housing, heating systems, cars… stop blocking the roads, stop coercing dangerous Covid vaccines into people, never lock down for Covid types of infections when this would obviously do net harm… go for easy hire and fire, kill the Chagos lunacy, halve the size of government, cut and simplify taxes, encourage the rich and hardworking to come, stay and not to leave… so much fat to cut out.
Alas Labour have quite insanely completely the reverse agenda, as much red tape, low skilled and criminal immigration and pointless parasitic jobs amd waste as possible.
November 7, 2025
The damage these fools are doing to confidence and growth is incalculable. The gov.uk website for checking council tax bands has crashed this am.
November 7, 2025
“When politicians tell us the hard truths that there are no magic money trees and no free lunches many do not want to believe them.”
And, why should people believe them?
It is reported that Starmer has taken 32 international trips since becoming PM, with Lammy at 40. Ed Miliband won’t even reveal the number of trips he’s taken. The hypocrisy of these ‘do as I say, not as I do’ politicians is off the charts. The British people could stomach tax rises if we were all in this together, but we clearly aren’t. The waste of taxpayers’ money is unacceptable. They give it away in ridiculous foreign aid, to undeserving illegal migrants, welfare payments to foreigners here and abroad, and the scam climate emergency. We can all see there are free lunches for the select few who have their snouts in the trough, and decent, hardworking British people are being forced to pay for it. We need a reset of our political class.
November 7, 2025
Indeed and also our King and Prince William’s blatant hypocrisy. I am in favour of the Monarchy but they should keep out of politics. Especially on climate as they are A. Wrong and B. Grade 1 hypocrites & C. Profoundly ignorant rather like the BBC. See the daily sceptic 50 BBC’s climate lies article.
Prince Charles (now King Charles III) famously stated in speeches in March and July 2009 that the world had “less than 100 months” (around eight years) to save the world! Has he said sorry for the b/s yet?
November 7, 2025
William actually boasted of Charles being proven wrong over half a century.
I’m afraid the Royal Family is not fit for purpose.
November 7, 2025
What is each civil servant tasked with doing? Does it justify a full role? How are the deliverables measured?
A large but simple exercise that could be achieved within each team that no one will undertake.
Nurses and teachers, minister one to one (or in the case of teachers hopefully no more than one to thirty) so I would not expect productivity gains from these areas (but no loss). Every other worker should be able to improve output due to technological advances in the last 20 years.
Is the civil services still using Internet Explorer?
November 7, 2025
Why on earth should British people work harder when there is little incentive to do so? One thing the lockdowns taught people was that leisure time is more important than working. They now see little benefit to working hard – so why do it? We are taxed to the hilt. The chancellor seems to think our money is hers for the taking. We can’t even grow a business and pass it on to our children, so why take the risk of starting one in the first place? Governments are becoming more communist, and we know from history that this doesn’t work. Politicians have destroyed our country and the morale of the British people, turning us into depressed, dejected and miserable individuals with no hope for a better future. They should be ashamed of themselves as they sit with their 50,000 COP30 mates, congratulating themselves on saving the planet.
November 7, 2025
Bill Gates is horrified. The ‘end of the planet’ scam was intended to fool the peasants, not the ‘elitists’. He can now see that the peasants are not fooled but the Kings and Heirs to the Throne, PMs and world leaders have swallowed it hook line and sinker.
November 7, 2025
The possibility of Labour being voted into power again depends on millions of voters losing their memory.
November 7, 2025
Rather like the possibility of the Tories Con-socialists ever regaining power!
November 7, 2025
“How to pay for public services.” Simple’s release the Country, then let people that ‘can’ – do. Let those that aspire achieve, or in ‘plain english’ encourage the creation of the economy. It is only the economy that pays any bills.
The things that Parliament needs to do is to stop inferring the Government will ‘give people money’ be honest government doesn’t have money. Then stop the illusion that those that have never worked productively can achieve more than those that have always ‘worked’ – keep government out of running things.
November 7, 2025
Exactly
November 7, 2025
Might I suggest there has been improvements due to IT, but these are more than cancelled by government’s capacity to generate more legislation and add to the administrative burden.
Like quangos, rather than have a bonfire, government is reluctant to get rid of them and nurtures more instead.
We have parliamentary candidates lining up promising more, but it’s never more efficiency. To fix a system you have to break it first, and no one in government is prepared to do that.
November 7, 2025
The reason the Public sector do not reduce their number is because the department heads are renumerated on size of their department. The bigger the head count of Public sector employees under your notional control the better your pay and rewards.
Get rid of that fundamental driver of Public Sector size and you may start to make some headway on reducing headcount.
November 7, 2025
Something to upset the Socialists and our Marxist Government. It has been confirmed that shareholders have agreed that Elon Musk will get his $1 trillion reward.
The real thing people in the UK Parliament don’t and won’t understand as they will only see the dollar value, is that reward will only come about if he grows the company by around 8 times today’s value within 10 years. Then, it is just shares that could have that value, not cash as implied by media hype, not even cash for nothing.
The UK Parliament would believe it could only be them and them alone capable of doing things that create something people would buy into, they wouldn’t dare to have anyone other than themselves trying to improve, evolve and taking thing forward. They would trash the nations future from out personal vanity. Take Milibands Net Zero that the OBR says will cost £116 billion, he, Government, Parliament wants that money to come from taxes over and above normal government spending. Any sane person wishing to spend £116 billion would first have a plan a real plan that would earn £116 billion. No in the UK Parliament knows best, it is best placed to run productive enterprise, so it will just tax, take money from the economy and then wonder why nothing happens nothing works.
Reply Musk and Tesla shareholders bother to aim to grow their company by more than total UK GDP. The UK government aims for growth of around 15% over 10 years compared to Tesla aiming at say 800%
November 7, 2025
Back here in the UK, both O2 & BT have announced this week they are to pay Musk to help them expand the UK’s broadband network.
The UK Parliament stops/blocks similar from happening from UK enterprise in the UK. The result of offshoring the Country has to buy in from abroad to mark time
Also today Shell has got rid of its North Sea assets, passed them into Foreign hands. Miliband is succeeding in destroying the UK and the majority in Parliament supports these moves of attrition against the UK People and the Nation
November 7, 2025
Late breaking, International Airlines Group (IAG) British Airways has also now signed a deal for Musk’s Services
November 7, 2025
@Reply – how bizarre someone wishing to increase wealth by first earning it
November 7, 2025
There are two things that will have to change before any of these necessary things can be achieved: first we will have to have some politicians who are prepared to make the same case that you are doing; until this happens nothing is likely to change. Politicians seem to think that failing to tell the truth is essential for their election, but Mrs Thatcher proved the opposite to be the case, and so would anyone who had the guts to try it now.
Secondly there will have to be a total change in attitude among the great majority of civil servants and public sector employees at all levels, from believing as at present, that their jobs are just for their own benefit, to an ethos of service to the public and the state.
November 7, 2025
There are probably some mathematicians that could prove this, but just from a point of observation the truth is that a BIG State equals inefficiency – the bigger it grows the more ineffective and unproductive it becomes.
Those working for the state have little pressure to do better – they see themselves as tiny cogs in a big machine with no possible way they could influence anything.
Some local councils recognizing that their staff are not fully employed and not wishing to make any redundant instead push for a 4 day working week with justifications that stretch the imagination.
Is it time to replace public services with private ones?
November 7, 2025
If the Government keeps employing more people, productivity goes down. Look at the Home Office, 51,000 Civil Servants, but absolutely useless. Cut that to 10,000 and you will see productivity soar. However, the Home Office may also be unable to do everything it currently does, with lower numbers of staff. But that is also a bonus, because the Government is doing too much and interfering in people’s lives too much!
Then what about NHS England? We are told it is being shut down, but so far, there are no redundancies, and they are even advertising for more staff. Absolutely pathetic, but typical of both Labour and Conservative governments.
We need a Trump or a Millia ( President of Argentina ) to reduce the size of government and Quangos.
We need to live within our means, or the UK will go bankrupt.
November 7, 2025
The repeat broadcast of the BBC’s 1977 “The Age of Uncertainty” by the late JK Galbraith is well worth watching – if only to see explained how folk do not learn from history.
November 7, 2025
Sir John
Not unreasonable that there is talk about Public Sector productivity, but surely isn’t that in itself a misnomer, a cart before the horse discussion. The question should really be where does government with taxpayer money best fulfil its obligations, needs.
The UK Parliament is the board of UK.plc, it is using other people’s money to fund services. I don’t know the figures but surely a massive amount brought in under the protection of the Civil Service should and would be better provide at better costs by mainstream industry and commerce. A simple time limited contract with a simple requirement of what has to be delivered that is open to competition logically (and provable) says would deliver a better service
A simple analogy the average person or even company in the UK wanting work done, for home or otherwise just gets quotes decides what suits them best and the job gets done. So why isn’t UK.plc doing what they expect, demand others do?
November 7, 2025
The other glaring flaw is also trying to do thing centrally that are better done at the delivery end.
The reason devaluation failed is because, it never happened, the centre is so afraid of the people and things actually working when done by others they had to be the controller on a one size fits all basis. But that’s a whole other discussion
November 7, 2025
When you tell a man giving half his income to the Government and getting very little for it, that he is asking for a free lunch, that man begins to wonder who exactly is eating the lunch he paid for, free of charge.
Socialists are mentally attuned to paying people not to work, they do it with the Overseas Aid Budget, the Benefits budget and with a good proportion of the State Sector Payroll. It was just a small step to pay the whole private sector (badly) to shut down and transfer all the trade to the corporate sector which was allowed to remain open. Johnson has no problem with a magic money tree, he lives in a world of magical thinking. He demonstrates that with the conduct of his own finances.
It’s time we reintroduced the selection committees to propose and sift the candidates properly. The political parties have demonstrated beyond a shadow of doubt, that they are incapable of producing sound Parliaments.
Start with 600 odd unsound people in Parliament and everything else is doomed.
November 7, 2025
“It is bizarre that UK public sector productivity is no higher today than in 1997. That’s 28 years of big investments in computing by all parts of government, years of more training and promotions in the civil service and wider administration of the public sector. So why has none of this resulted in efficiency gains to match those of the private sector?” In response to John’s question, Guy de la Bedoyere’s piece in this morning’s Daily Sceptic newsletter illustrates how successive Government’s IT solutions have actually made things so much worse.
November 7, 2025
Sir John
‘It is bizarre that UK public sector productivity is no higher today than in 1997’
The British Empire at its peek was 450million people, approx. 1 in 4 of the whole World at the time. The Civil Service then numbered approx. 100,000 of which 40,000 administered the Empire. The population on these isles (GB) was the around 43 million.
Without digressing to the morality or other things associated with their being such a thing as an Empire as some would wish – that is not the point. Things were working back then the nation was productive, it was earning, it had money to pay its way, fund aspirations and innovation. The UK tax take was said to be 33% of GDP and able to fund the framework for growth.
The only point I am making here is we now have 6 million people on the taxpayer funded payroll, the framework for growth has been removed. There is not just a lack of interest in creating an economy to fund tomorrow there is positive action from the top to halt it and make everyone their slaves and beholding to the State. Tax is not creating a tomorrow it is just paying the ever-increasing debt mountain. Something doesn’t compute!
Parliament into the mix wants to fund the aspiration of NetZero not by earning, growing the economy but by tax and only tax. The refusal to Budget, which by definition means controlling ‘spend’ instead just spend, spend, spend without any rational. Means we have a Parliament not fit for purpose.
November 7, 2025
The average UK Citizen has to budget daily, weekly, yearly to get to tomorrow. The shape their expenditure to fit their income first, not spend then think ooops! If the average Citizen has aspirations that require an expenditure that exceeds income they first think on what to cut back on, then how can they increase their actual earnings – that is what budgeting is all about.
I wouldn’t mind betting there are some in Parliament that act and do the same. But it comes back as a ‘kick in the teeth’ when they don’t practice what they preach, or is it is because it is other people money the don’t give a …..!
I say Parliament deliberately as it is their appointed Government that is their executive to run things and it is they themselves that are paid to hold the excitative(the Government) to account
November 7, 2025
I see David Frost has resigned the Tory whip to take the job, leading the IEA, that Lord Harris of Highcross once offered Rodney Atkinson.
Personally I’m sorry to see Lord Frost take himself out of the running to save the Conservative Party. I thought he was the only one remaining with the capacity.
I think the odds are pretty short on his first message to the BOE, the Treasury and the First Lord of the Treasury, that there is no magic money tree.
November 7, 2025
@Lynn Atkinson – you can’t save something that has been expelled. The Country needs a Conservative party, but that will only return when the membership takes control and becomes it’s management.
November 8, 2025
Perhaps, like Danny Kruger, he has concluded that the Not-a-Conservative-Party is beyond saving.
November 7, 2025
Labour design inefficiency and make work into everything they do, often accompanied by a regime that issues heavy fines. Thus we hear that landlords will soon need 3 separate licences to let property, involving different bureaucracy, and as we know from the case of the Chancellor, with potentially punitive financial consequences for non compliance.
Now we hear of their scheme to tax EVs per mile, which will require elaborate databases and new computer systems, doubtless with big fines for non compluance. Contrast with the simplicity of road fuel taxation, which is levied when product leaves the handful of bonded storage locations and is effectively extremely hard to avoid: only those with access to red diesel might be able to evade some of the tax. Since EV chargers are all separately metered by law it would be easy to levy an equivalent per kWh charge to road fuel duty, which would be about 20-25 p/kWh, depending on whether you include VAT. No need for elaborate new systems and fines.
November 7, 2025
Hi sir john
Wonder how many free lunches starmer got along side his free suits and glasses
and football and concert tickets along with the free use of a penthouse apartment for his children to study at from sir Ali
November 7, 2025
According to GB News (reported by Guido) more than 1000 criminal migrants have entered (ie been imported) in the last 24 hours.
Why shouldn’t the British people believe that there is a magic money tree and a free lunch when the Government is deliberately importing these foreign criminals and giving them “free everything.”
November 7, 2025
621 criminals were illicitly shipped, into the UK yesterday on the 6th November from France… in nine (9) bloody massive boats that no one saw coming …the magic money will look after their needs
November 7, 2025
The media today is reporting that 2TK’s deal to reset the UK ‘s arrangements with the EU is includes demands that the UK taxpayer has to fund Brussels. Apparently thier officials claim no one gets to trade with the EU without funding the unelected unaccountable beurocratic machinery. 2TK conveniently neglected to inform those paying
November 7, 2025
The concern with head count reduction by “natural” attrition, is the the ‘good’ move on better jobs and the ‘bad’ stay in well paid, safe roles where they can mark time to an eventual final salary, index linked retirement. Nor does this consider obsolete skill sets that need to be completely updated and that will not be amenable to “retraining”. A Purge is a better solution and (whilst often bruta)l is the most effective way get a moribound organisation back into shape quickly.