In the USA Elon Musk promised $2 tn off spending before the election and a halved $1 tn of savings when given the job of setting up DOGE. As he moves on from that task Congress is busy agreeing a further rise in public spending with no sign of big savings built into the budget numbers. I do not doubt Mr Musk’s energy or determination to cut costs. He did expose some scandalous wastes. He assures us his process for cost down will now embed and bring forth more results. Time will tell. What he has done is made people more sceptical about those who promise to breeze into power to boost productivity and cut waste, as it proves difficult.
In the UK the government is seeking cuts in admin and back office on a more modest scale and seeking to turn round bad productivity. It too is finding that difficult to land. It is still adding stupid spending like the Chagos and more migrant hotel places. Reform has come out with bold plans to make major cuts in public spending to pay for some tax reductions and benefit increases, People will watch with interest how they get on in the 10 Councils and two Mayoralties they won in May. So far there is no sign of them cutting budgets below inherited levels.
The task of reducing public spending growth is urgent. It needs clarity about which things government should stop doing, with the identified costs that will cease. It requires careful negotiation with staff about how to use staff freezes, voluntary redundancies, better technology to allow smarter working. It needs good use of bonuses and promotions to transform quality, productivity and outcomes for public service users.
May 30, 2025
Good morning.
One can easily make cuts. One does not, and should not, pay for or subsidies (eg Indian workers NIC) them. No overseas development to countries with space and nuclear programs. Tougher rules on so called charities. They are making millions with senior people getting exceptionally large salaries and benefits. There are rules and regulations that need either revising or removal.
There also has to be tighter control of budgets. I have already mentioned the fact that, in the USA they have a law whereby, if a Federal project goes over budget by a certain amount, to get more funding it has to go back to the US Senate. Such a system would have curtained the likes of HS2 and Hinckley Point.
May 30, 2025
Yesterday 2TK gave a speech cringing as it was , dedicated to slagging off Farage and his spending plans. The fact that such a charlatan has the temerity to criticise someone foe at least putting sensible proposals forward shows he is frightened.
Cancelling Net Stupid is an obvious major saving and refusing to give hotels and benefits to channel invaders is also sensible. Cancelling payments to Mauritius and stopping subsidies to the wind and solar companies is sensible.
Wringing your hands and declaring public spending can’t be cut is following WEF guidelines. It takes someone with bottle to swing the axe to the profligate shenanigans of central and local government.
You say there is no evidence of Reform cutting costs at the council they run. They’ve only been in power 3 weeks so stop being churlish.
Reply Nothing churlish in my comment on Reform. Taking over at beginning of May one month into a budget year allows a new Council to reduce spending for that year if it wishes to.I would urge them to get on with it as they campaigned on a ticket of rooting out waste and undesirable costs.
May 30, 2025
Yesterday I had the pleasure of going round a local major CCGT plants. It was a reasonably windy day so the station was on hot standby. All machines on barring and boilers being kept hot with auxiliary burners, the plant was on 30 mins standby. Fully staffed the place was costing a fortune producing nothing when it can produce electricity for circa £40 pet mwh.
The stupidity of the uniparty is beyond parody as they where Importing at £107 per mwh and paying wind and solar operators the same
Most of what was paid for electricity yesterday was going directly to foreigners when a domestic plant stood expensively idle.
You couldn’t make it up.
May 30, 2025
+1 stupid, or corrupt? I suppose it could be both.
May 30, 2025
Pride – and we know what follows.
May 30, 2025
Watt-Logic
High wind and forecasting errors cause havoc on the GB grid
30 May 2025|Networks, Renewable energy|19 Comments
https://watt-logic.com/2025/05/30/high-wind-and-forecasting-errors-cause-havoc-on-the-gb-grid/
May 30, 2025
Agree Mark. Private sector firms would set expense savings and did then meet those. Many firms also have strict rules to ensure costs don’t rise excessively. It would be easy to make large cuts in public spending if there was the will to do so.
As I say on the difficulty of cutting benefits, people get used to a certain model and squeal when thing get taken away. We need to go through that pain to embed a different model.
May 30, 2025
@Mark B – you could suggest there is no management of the economy – no one cares about the economy just how to contrive the next tax or tax rise to fund the Big State giveaways
May 30, 2025
Ian
The problem with the economy is that much of it has been farmed out to QUANGO’s and so called experts. Eg The Bank of England whose only interest in the economy is inflation. Then you get the Treasury whose only interest is the Bond Market, and so on. So when a Chancellor decided that we are not going to worry about those things and go for growth, they do not like it as it runs against their doctrine.
May 30, 2025
You identify, in your last paragraph, how to go about the job of cutting spending. The Labour government instead appears to sit down with its union paymasters to work out what pay rises to hand out and what working conditions to relax. The fact is there are next to no politicians/MPs with the bottle to cut public spending. This will only change when the bond vigilantes decide to strike – by refusing to buy the debt offered by a profligate government and it is then unable to meet its payroll commitments. I believe the UK will again have to go through that painful experience before it can gets it’s spending under control.
May 30, 2025
Indeed. No politicians/MPs with the bottle to cut public spending – until forced too by the economic doom loop of ever higher tax rates and ever less tax base caused by these high tax rates, high net zero energy costs, OTT employment laws, the rich leaving, the hard working leaving and ever more low skilled benefit claimants arriving!
A vast increase in public debt under the Tories main spent by Boris and Sunak doing huge net harm on with net harm lockdowns and net harm Covid “Vaccines” and Net Zero lunacy and open door, low skilled, immigration. They have not even fully stopped the net harm vaccines yet!
May 30, 2025
David Frost in the Telegraph.
Only radical action can block Britain’s path to penury
What is to be done? Here is a programme for a change-minded government.
Not much chance of this from Starmer or Kemi or whomever replaces either or both of them before the election.
May 30, 2025
Or after ..
May 30, 2025
So where do we move too? I am overseas already but a change of scenery might be nice.
May 30, 2025
It’s not just the bottle, we have a cohort of MPs who will vote down any move to cut spending. They won’t be labelled with the charge of austerity. Whatever we say here, the government will carry on borrowing and spending more until the money markets force them to cut, and there will be revolt from the back benchers who want to take us to Venezuela.
May 30, 2025
Your comment on Reform highlights a very serious point. To be credible they have to demonstrate that they are good managers in the councils that they run. It is an important hurdle for them. I hope they do well.
May 30, 2025
@Jazz – Reform have the massive advantage of NOT being the others. This century has been one failure after another all ripping up things before creating a viable and sustainable alternative
May 30, 2025
@Jazz; I too hope Reform do well in those Counties they now control, for the sake of the people who live in those areas, some have seen years of mismanagement, others have been promised a wing and a preyer, the last thing either needs now is to be stung up like light-bulbs floating down a river, in an attempt to make some politico look as though they’ve found a clue…
May 31, 2025
An interesting article in the Telegraph about how much of council tax goes on pensions. How do you cut this figure?
May 31, 2025
@Jazz; “interesting article in the Telegraph”
Interesting perhaps, not necessarily informative though, the Times and Telegraph are both unduly partisan these days, just like the Tabloids!
“pensions. How do you cut this figure?”
In reality I doubt such fixed costs can be cut, Councils are employers just like any other, but there is a lot of discretionary costs they can cut (assuming central govt allows), Net Zero agendas [1], LTNs, DEI, councils supporting activist groups etc.
[1] such as excessive recycling schemes, do residents really need or want slop bins. Methane from human food waste being a tiny fraction compared to that given off via the natural cycle of decaying wild animals and vegetation.
May 30, 2025
The dreadful Nigel Farage, the deluded pro-Putin messianic Leader of the Reform limited company, has decided to go on a lurch to the extreme left in his attack on Labour. He has proposed the complete reinstatement of the pensioner’s winter fuel allowance and an end to the two-child benefit cap. He wants lower earners to earn £20,000 before they start paying tax. He proposes tax breaks for families to have more children. This and many other of Farage’s economic proposals constitute voodoo economics which would put at least another £150billion on the national debt. These policies actually resemble the worst aspects of Corbynism.
Farage proposes to pay for all this by eliminating non-existent “savings” from scrapping net zero, taxing solar/wind farms out of existence, trying to extract non-existent hydrocarbons from the N Sea by paying HUGE subsidies to the oil majors and unrealistically breaking up about £150 billion’s worth of QUANGOs. To view Reform as right-wing via its migration rhetoric and anti-woke agenda is to miss how fundamentally left-wing it is economically. Their proposals to raise the income tax threshold alone would cost at least £80billion.
The Conservatives need a new Leader who can rebuild the voter base and take Farage on over his socialist economic illiteracy.
May 30, 2025
SG. Farage makes some very valid points. Why shouldn’t we extract our own energy. Why do we need hundreds of Quangos. Why shouldn’t we cancel Net Stupid and save billions. You are obviously a dyed in the wool socialist who believed the government are best placed to waste our taxes.
May 30, 2025
@Ian Wragg; Given that most town councils, most county councils, most squirearchy know their local population far better than those sitting in the Westminster and Whitehall villages; never mind the “hundreds of Quangos”, should Reform ever get elected to govt their first and only Act would be to sack themselves, the largest Quangos of all – power to the people! 😛
People only hate Quangos when they fail to up-hold the protestors own values, the whys and wherefores of their existence is otherwise irrelevant. I bet few on this site objected to the Brexit Quangos though?…
May 30, 2025
Reform are not a quango, they are a political party.
The Government itself is not a quango either.
May 30, 2025
@Sam; Wrong on both accounts, Reform UK is a Company by Limitation (they say so o9n their website), and whilst the Cabinet might be ‘the government’; nothing else is, and certainly not back-bench MPs and their Select Committees which often work independently of the government.
In any case, my comment was clearly sent tongue in cheek, hence the choice of ‘Smiley’.
Whatever.
May 30, 2025
It may be a Limited Company Jerry
But it isn’t a quango
It is a political party.
It isn’t funded fully or in part by the Government.
And if you were to bother to look up the definition of a quango you would realise the Government itself cannot be a quango.
Other than that Jerry you got everything in the rest of your post spot on.
May 31, 2025
@Sam; Oh do stop trolling, you’re not being clever, just wasting your own but more importantly our hosts time. Everyone else will have read my comments about Reform as applying should they ever win a general election; otherwise please explain what you did not understand when I said “should Reform ever get elected to govt”, duh! Do you actually bother reading what you knees jerk out a response to…?
Also you are wrong, Reform UK is a Company by Limited, not a Party, they might well stand candidates but the ‘membership’ has little or no say over policy etc, unlike a true political Party. Whatever.
May 31, 2025
Pointing out the obvious errors in your numerous daily posts Jerry is not trolling.
You are being ridiculous and over sensitive
PS
Reform are a political party and no amount of pedantic words from you alters that fact.
May 31, 2025
Most people would just say..oop, I seem to have got that bit wrong , having looked up the definition of exactly what a quango is I now realise the Government isn’t a quango and neither is Reform because to be a quango you have to be funded or partly funded by the Government.
I reckon that would have been your best response Jerry.
May 31, 2025
@$am; It is trolling when you have clearly never read what you are replying to, bar reading my name! Otherwise please explain what you did not understand when I said “should Reform ever get elected to govt”, at no time have I called Reform UK Party Limited (trading as Reform UK) a Quango, the only people to do that was you $am and now your mate Mart!n.
@M!B “Most people would just say..oop,”
Indeed, a very sensible suggestion for $am, having clearly miss read what I actually said. 95% of Parliament is a Quango, not the government, as defined by the OED definition of the word…
If Reform gained the same majority as Labour has today most of Reforms MP’s will not be in the “government”, merely members of Parliament sitting on the govt benches, that is why they are called back-benchers, and why when a Sec. of State or Minister resigns they are said to have “left the government”, why is that so difficult to grasp.
Strewth!
May 31, 2025
What a waffle from you Jerry.
You will be soon running out of tangents to go off on.
Originally trying to redefine what everyone else understands by the word Government and the word Quango.
But I’m so glad you now accept that the Government cannot be a Quango and that Reform also cannot be a Quango, so whilst it’s been a long long lonely road we have eventually seem to have made a breakthrough.
June 1, 2025
@Sam; Stop trolling.The onlly waffle is coming from you.
It will be noted that once again you fail to answer the simple question I asked of you;
Also stop lying, stop puttying YOUR words into my mouth, it was YOU who called Reform a Quango. I was referring to a time when Reform might be sitting on the government *benches*, as anyone who has studied English at a GCSE level understood.
June 1, 2025
Still using the T word Jerry I note.
Very poor.
Look up the definition of that word.
Pointing out your errors is a good thing to do.
Because you can learn something and maybe try to compose yourself and check things before firing off a dozen more of your often agressive posts.
May 30, 2025
Dennis Cooper on these pages regularly highlights the lack of growth achieved since the Climate Change Act was enacted. Rolling it back plus reducing the huge subsidies associated with the initiative would deliver large savings.
Even as a committed weather zealot you must admit net zero is a costly business, your argument is that it is necessary not efficient.
May 30, 2025
My council has just this week paid contractors for 4 nights to reduce a 200mtr 4 lane road into a 3 lane road to reduce and comply with government (initiated under the tories) ‘clean-air’ planning act …the said road had pollutants in excess of norms (by 1 point) back in Jan 2024, since then every month recorded well below norms …and that recording 18 months ago was the only justification for spending @£50k
May 30, 2025
tarnished gold…first para fine, except pro-Putin? what bizarre unfounded nonsense.
why would concentrating 4 lane traffic into 3 improve air quality? The opposite might apply?
May 31, 2025
Its about 15min cities, getting people to find different routes and different forms of transport ….net-zero social engineering
May 30, 2025
As in the Netherlands all he needs to do is remove all subsidies from new wind generation (which they did in 2017) and all projects will immediately stop because they are not economic, it is a very expensive way of generating power. The Netherlands have chosen to reintroduce subsidies to try to drum up interest but in UK Reform can simply drill for more oil and gas. Net savings and increased tax revenue – what’s not to like ?
May 30, 2025
Roy. The Netherlands are sitting on the largest gas field in Europe but politicians have banned all drilling and exploration. Hence back to the subsidies if intermittent renewables.
WEF guidelines.
May 30, 2025
Madness
May 31, 2025
@glen cullen; Not really madness for the Netherlands not to wish to exploit their natural gas fields, for a country already below sea level they clearly do not want to sink any lower! 😆
May 30, 2025
@SG; Reform UK is a weather vane, not a signpost, other politicos need to take note…
You fail to understand that Farage is gaining his power base via those disgusted with the woke (climate) nonsense you always push, I despise Reform and those at its helm but if it was a straight-up choice between more of what you want and genuine science I would have to vote Reform – and yes it might well come to that, unless A.N.Other Party finds a clue. It is not an economic question, it is becoming a question of survival as more and more untested or previously failed ‘answers’ are rolled out.
CO2 is not a harmful gas, it is a necessary plant food (that in return gives us oxygen), so rather than plant EV panels on marginal land we would be better to plant hedgerows and trees in their place. Whilst the truly harmful by-products from burning fossil fuels (sulfur etc) can be removed before or post combustion, so there really is no need to demonize oil and natural gas (plus coal….) as they have been, it was just something the eco blob picked up on via their hard-left followers who objected to what was viewed as obscene profits of privately owned oil companies.
May 30, 2025
Paying it to everyone then adjust the tax threshold for higher earning pensioners is the cheapest way to do it! Anyway they want to ditch net zero so energy cost should fall hugely USA has them at 25% – 33% of ours.
May 30, 2025
We are massively over-governed in this country. In the last three decades, the cost of “Government” has been deliberately increased with the imposition of devolved Parliaments in Scotland and Wales (NI was understandable and justifiable); City/Regional Mayors in England which no-one wanted; dozens of new Quangos; Police and Crime Commissioners and a great many more appointed to the House of Frauds.
Every single one of these NEW governmental entities / individuals, and their fiefdoms, is costing us money which we never used to have to fund.
It is understandable that public services, which are now “serving” 70 million+ people not the 60 million when Blair started wrecking the country, require increased funding to do it. It is NOT understandable why so many governmental institutions needed creating to oversee it.
That’s where savings could and should be made; starting with the Quangos. And if that means scrapping laws which justified their creation, then scrap the laws: starting with the (In)Equality Act and the DIE nonsense.
As for Reform Councils: “So far there is no sign of them cutting budgets below inherited levels.”
It’s only been three weeks, Sir John and the budgets are set for the current year. Slash and burn is never a good idea; they need to identify where the waste is and where savings can be made. By next year we will have an idea of both.
May 30, 2025
Councils can’t trim their budgets. Their statutory obligations use up all the money they have with nothing left over. Relieve them of the responsibility for care home provision, for those who spent all they had and put nothing by for their old age, and they might have spare.
Reply Councils waste plenty of money. Lib Dem Wokingham threw £5.5 m away on a paint a roundabout scheme for example. Reform has promised to save money by being anti woke as with DEI programmes.
May 30, 2025
@DA; I think you’ll find Local Authorities tend to use up, or officially earmark, their entire budget as they can not simply roll unused money over to the next financial year, if they do they run the risk of loosing an equivalent sum from any central govt support for the next year (same with govt departments I believe) as it is deemed they do not need the extra money, hence why, come March, you get the Highway departments repainting white lines, the park departments paying their contractors to edge and weed traffic islands etc.
There would be nothing to stop a Council from, for example, de-funding LTNs and reallocating the money to more worthy policies, such as resurfacing roads/pavements, cutting the fees payable in car-parks close to the beleaguered High Streets, thus encourage people into the town centres.
May 30, 2025
Perhaps they could instead give a rebate to council tax payers to use up left over cash, then there would also be none to roll over to the next financial year. If a candidate put that in their election leaflet as a policy wouldn’t you be strongly motivated to vote for him/her?
May 30, 2025
@DA; “If a candidate put that in their election leaflet as a policy wouldn’t you be strongly motivated to vote for him/her?”
No, because often the work that gets done in March needed doing back in May!
You might wish to live in an unkempt S#!t hole but most do not, they accept that taxes are a necessary evil, what they do not like is seeing the money wasted, such as on pointless LTNs, painting the roads green, water spout pavement (that make the area unaccessible to all but tots) etc.
May 30, 2025
reply to reply…and that would fund a helluva lot of pothole repairs.
But then the LibDems claim the pothole shambles is over!
May 30, 2025
Agree
May 30, 2025
Exactly then we have (or had) the international quangos on top of this too. The foolish Starmer has just committed us to more like the pandemic treaty.
May 30, 2025
There is simply a lack of real will or urgency to cut public spending.
Far easier to raise taxes
That is until there is a revolt of some form by the taxpayers
Do not vote for a party that gives out more and more money
It is going to take a long time before things change I am afraid
May 30, 2025
Sir John
What the UK Government has made us aware of is that while it has grown the State and increased the wages and benefits of those it pays with our/Taxpayers money – it is not prepared to manage, its production, the economy.
As it stands today all the ‘talking heads’ are voicing opinions of massive tax rises to fund massive pay and rewards in the Public Sector. Not one voice in the media, or seemingly parliament or government is talking about the economy and the management of it. Everything is about spending more for less – the great giveaway of something they haven’t generated to fund their next day in power.
Reply I talk about lowering spending in my media interviews each weekn
May 30, 2025
@Reply
I think most logical thinkers are on your wave length. It is not budgeting if you keep spending money you haven’t earn t. The State, the Government and its Parliament keep suggesting that the tax they take is earnings, their earnings. The miss the point all tax in today’s climate is just simply money removed from the economy.
The average UK household, the taxpayers knows how to budget and manage more than this shower, because they do it daily just to get by.
May 30, 2025
We are governed by authoritarians who need to control every aspect of our lives. This is costly.
Libertarian who do not seek cradle to the grave solutions are required. Unfortunately mostly these types are not interested in governing.
The Overton window on interference by authorities needs to be shifted. Reform has started this but a true Conservative party could shift it faster. That is the way to cut spending, make doing it necessary to get elected.
May 30, 2025
@NS; “Libertarian who do not seek cradle to the grave solutions are required. Unfortunately mostly these types are not interested in governing.”
No, they would appear to be class 1 hypocrites were they to do so! After all you can’t claim tax allowances, or use avoidance schemes etc. yoursefl if you do not wish others to seek cradle to the grave handouts or hand-backs!
May 30, 2025
More whataboutery Jerry?
Equating libertarians to tax evaders is a stretch even for you.
I note you are unusually belligerent in your contrarianism today, your response to Mr Gold is particularly entertaining.
May 30, 2025
NS; Anything that disagrees with your point now seems to count as “whataboutery”, are you related to @Sam? 😮
Tax allowances and rebates are just as much a benefit-in-kind as a handout, and were did I use the words “tax evaders”, stop putting your words into my mouth!
May 30, 2025
What have tax allowances got to do with being politically libertarian ?
May 31, 2025
I didn’t think you were disagreeing with me Jerry merely using the opening to attack a certain type of person with whom you have an issue. Thus not answering the question but bring up another subject i.e whataboutery / strawman / Non sequitur
May 31, 2025
@NA; I have no problem with Libertarians, just ‘Fibertarian’ hypocrites. 😉
You just do not like thinking of tax allowances as a form of benefit-in-kind, there was no whataboutery / strawman / Non sequitur in my comment, unless you care to point out the two Exchequer purses in use, the one that contains taxation receipts/reimbursements and the second purse that the government use to fund expenditure (such as handing out UC benefits or fund the NHS, road building etc), and if this second purse is not filled from taxation perhaps you might care to explain were you think the money does comes from!
After reaching the staring point for tax, any further tax allowances are another form of hand-back, much as any contributions based or tax funded benefits are.
May 30, 2025
Why would they be Class 1 hypocrites?
In order to achieve their particular type of libertarian politics they would first need to gain power.
May 30, 2025
Off Topic.
One of the world’s most popular car brands has scrapped plans to invest $300million (£222million) in its electric vehicle motor production division, while ramping up production of new petrol and diesel engines.
General Motors has abandoned its plan to invest in EV production at one of its factories and will instead invest $888million (£659million) to make new V8 engines.
GM has seen sales of its electric vehicles slow in recent years, prompting the change in production at its Tonawanda, New York, plant. Any electric vehicle sold by General Motors has a battery warranty for eight years, or 100,000 miles, whichever comes first.
This is the biggest single investment in an engine plant by GM, as it prepares to make the sixth generation of its V8 engine.
May 30, 2025
So, 8 year battery and then you are wondering when the car is probably crush value!
May 30, 2025
Indeed so for a 40k car worth virtually nothing after 8 years doing 100,000 miles. So circa 70p in finance and depreciation a mile plus fuel, maint. tyres, insurance… I will stick with my old petrol jalopy golf cab thanks.
May 30, 2025
One things for sure whether in the UK or abroad Governments are very good at spending money and taxing but hopeless at saving it or making it.
There are a number of initiatives the UK Government could and should take to fill the black holes which would fund deficiencies in the NHS,road repairs and related infrastructure, new prisons, new schools etc.
1]Stop the funding of HS2 immediately; put it on hold indefinitely until we are in a better place to continue with it.
2]Stop immigration and the illegal migrants
3]Cut diversity and wokeness from public bodies and Councils;it’s expensive and not necessary
4]Don’t give in to those trade unions whose members already get very good salaries and always want more.
5]Don’t renationalise the railway system; leave it in private hands.
6]Cease all foreign aid until further notice.
These are brave decisions that must be made now otherwise any deficit will have to be made from the UK taxpayer.
Reply I agree with a lot of those. Let us see how much Reform Councils save on cutting “diversity and wokeness”
May 30, 2025
@PW; The last time the UK railways were funded by private capital was prior to 1948, if not two decades earlier (give the support given to the railways during the depression era). But I agree, the railways should in pereferancre have been properly privatized, not just franchised, not renationalized (although that was better than doing nothing!). It would be quite possible to divide up the system on geographical eras similar to how it was done in 1923, each area being responsible for the track, passenger and freight etc. with through running powers for inter-regional trains.
May 30, 2025
“It requires careful negotiation with staff about how to use staff freezes, voluntary redundancies, better technology to allow smarter working.”
Why is that then ? I worked in the private sector and there was no negotiation at all about forced redundancies when they were needed – the company simply followed the legal procedure and that was that. Why is the public sector different ?
I note you are commenting that Reform councils have come up with no cost cutting plans in the first four weeks they have been in charge – perhaps you can direct us to the detailed cost cutting plans Conservative-run councils have come up with in the same period ? It should be easy for them as they have been in power for the previous years too. I suppose as the Conservatives have announced no economic policies at all, on taxation or the two-child benefit cap, or anything else, their own councils can get away with similar passivity.
Reply The Conservatives are the only party proposing to keep the two child cap as it costs £3.5 bn to remove. They opposed the farm tax, the NI hike and the extra spending of Labour on Chagos, EU re set, train driver pay without productivity etc.
May 30, 2025
“So far there is no sign of them cutting budgets below inherited levels.”
Give them a chance. They were only sworn in a couple of weeks ago. Cuts take time otherwise, mistakes will be made. Already in my area, they have held an open day, inviting the public to air their complaints and suggestions. We have also seen an increase in the number of pothole repairs.
May 30, 2025
@Christine; “they have held an open day, inviting the public to air their complaints and suggestions.”
Oh come off it, the public accounts are an open secrete, as is public opinion!
What you appear to be claiming is Reform went to the electorate and said “Vote for us, we *might* create polices you’ll approve of”; if any other party behaved like that you would be full on criticism..
“We have also seen an increase in the number of pothole repairs.”
As has my non Reform area, might have something to do with both the Sunak and Starmer govts taking head last year and increasing the DfT’s pothole repair budget, paid to County and Local Councils…
May 30, 2025
You need to have a programme specified in details so that when you are elected you ‘hit the ground running’. How can you ‘promise’ anything at an election unless you already know how you will deliver.
The Reform Councils have so far proved that they have plenty of promises but no plan as to how to action them. That is Ben Habib’s accusation. It seems to be true.
May 30, 2025
Someone called John Stewart posted this on a DT comment page this morning “John Redwood, should be employed to produce a fiscal framework for Reform.”
Care to comment, Sir John?
Reply I offer my fiscal framework and economic advice free to all on this site and the media. Reform have not asked for any help. Conservatives do ask for elaborations of my thoughts.
May 30, 2025
reply to reply …I doubt Reform want to be found working with your thoughts while you obviously prefer to have Conservatives in power! Like expecting the other football manager giving you his team, strategy and possible subs and when!
Get real – until you join admirable forces with Reform I expect nothing less.
May 31, 2025
Farage is Reform and he is a Narcissist. That means everything is ‘stolen’. Of course he will ‘assume the personality traits’ and policies of JR if he thinks they are popular or the only thing on offer. Don’t expect any credit though.
Think of Johnson. When he became PM he assumed what he believed to be the personality and politics of Churchill (government of national unity, needed a crisis big enough to shut down all opposition, etc) He even claimed in live TV that he would lead troops against the Russians were he a General (self-preservation trumps everything, even glory), because of course Churchill rode in the last cavalry charge.
Narcissists are dangerous because they want to please those who surround them. In government it’s the blob which surrounds them.
May 30, 2025
Badenoch is correct to criticize both Farage and Starmer, but at the same time she also needs to face the criticism herself, she appears very quite (or is drowned out) on the wealth sapping woke polices that ballooned under the last govt. (2010-14) that could be cut without affecting real people, unlike benefit cuts and such like.
May 30, 2025
I will confine my comment to the UK situation.
Few posting here will not be clear that the only way to reduce public expenditure is for government to do and interfere less in our lives.
Listening to police chiefs demanding much more money to do their job promotes two observation :
1. The population has risen hugely in the last decade caused by inward migration. We already know that young male migrants commit more crime than the indigenous population and the country is awash with foreign gangs with no intention of obeying the law. This is not confined to the UK : it is happening all over Europe, especially in Sweden and Germany where hugely disproportionate numbers have been allowed in.
2. Nobody could have failed to notice the number of police officers sent to arrest innocent white citizens for so-called hate crimes. This new “crime wave” didn’t exist before lefties invented it ! Fortunately there have been few cases as shocking as the jailing of Lucy Connolly.
Why do politicians and police allow constant demonstrations about Gaza ? Surely, in London they could be limited to one demo a month ? They could then by properly policed and those threatening murder and other forms of violence could be arrested, as they should be.
It seems that the public sector is still recruiting. Why ? The civil service should be rapidly reduced to pre-pandemic manpower levels then by another 25% by using AI.
The, of course, is net zero…………….
May 30, 2025
@Chris S; “I will confine my comment to the UK situation.”
Good, as the server appears to been rejecting any mention of certain matters pertaining to the USA, despite our host mentioning them!
Perhaps our host needs to check his WP settings?…
May 30, 2025
Why are any demonstration allowed on issues in which the U.K. is not a party? I understand demonstrating when the RAF was flying with the Luftwaffe to bomb our allies, the Serbs. We demonstrated to pressure the BRITISH government – it had locus.
What can the British Government do about India/Pakistan or Israel/Islam? Nothing! No demonstrations should be allowed.
May 30, 2025
@LA; “What can the British Government do about India/Pakistan or Israel/Islam? Nothing! No demonstrations should be allowed.”
Should that also apply to those who protest about immigrants, about having to pay IHT taxes, about net-zero et al, after all if what some claim is true there is nought the British Govt. can do about such things, given its all agreed by the WEF and our politicos are mere minions…
Be careful of what you wish for, beware of unintended consequences!
May 30, 2025
No because Parliament exercises our Sovereignty. It’s not theirs. And our sovereignty trumps all the bodies you name. Those who claim our government are suborned to them are wrong and try to fool the British people into believing that they are enslaved and there is nothing that they can do.
They lie.
May 31, 2025
@LA; But not if such things are pre-ordained by the WEF, as so many on this site claim, our govts are (as I said…) simple minions carrying out the wishes of the WEF and other even more multifarious groups, after all one of the objections to the EU is that they render(ed) UK Sovereignty inoperative.
In any case, leaving aside domestic issues, are you seriously suggesting, anyone who demonstrated at the time here in the UK against what was happening in 1930s Europe should have been prevented from doing so?
May 31, 2025
Jerry, who cares what the WEF ‘pre-ordained? Only the employed political class. The free British People don’t give two shakes of a lambs tail what they say, especially now that USAID has pulled their £80 million a year funding!
We need a new set of political activist thinkers and MPs.
May 30, 2025
It seems a major aim of this Government is to reduce the benefits bill. As a start, it needs to weed out fraud and misuse. Reducing the benefits of the most vulnerable is not good, from both a social and from a political point of view. I will not comment on who should qualify for benefits and who should not.
However, I believe an effort should be made to make paid work more attractive than state benefits. The aim would be, of course, to increase the overall tax take by increasing economic activity whilst, at the same time, reducing the benefits bill.
I believe, low earners are taxed too much. I believe we should increase the tax personal allowance and increase the National Insurance £ starting point. Perhaps also we should reduce the National Insurance % rate, particularly on lower incomes.
Also
Employer National Insurance is a tax on jobs. The percentage rate % is too high, and £ starting point is too low.
It would be interesting to see the computer models of the OBR and HM Treasury in order to understand their views on why we are where we are.
May 30, 2025
They pay for 5,000 empty hotel beds ‘in case they need them’.
The Government has far too much of our money. That MUST change.
May 30, 2025
As I understand it DOGE is an ongoing task and continues with a an existing cabinet member at the head. It is clear there is so much more to be done, that can be done.
Did labour cost all of the big expenses they piled on the taxpayer – I don’t think they did, so it’s somewhat guileless of the media to attack Reform for indicating policies and huge savings to come.
Supporting the Ukraine war with £billions was never discussed nor in any manifesto.
This diary and commentators have identified great expenses and waste from this government so it should be easy for HMG to get on top of this and reduce the burden on taxpayers – but of course, two tier, two tongued Starmer will pay lip service to the effort without achieving anything!
We should not imagine for a moment that HMG has any intention of switching from a high tax high spend economy to one where budgets make us solvent and taxpayers get value for their money!
May 30, 2025
There is no difficulty on either side of the Atlantic in seeing what needs to be cut from Government expenditure. What is totally lacking, certainly in the UK, is the necessary determination to get something done about it. It requires a drive and singleness of purpose which is totally foreign to our political leaders, and their officials. Indeed, it is pretty clear that the latter see their main function as being there to preserve the status quo.
The one possible hope, Nigel Farage, has made it clear from his opportunistic move on the child benefit cap, that he is just as bad as all the others. This leaves us with literally no one to vote for.
May 30, 2025
Governing is a lot like weeding. If you let a single weed run to seed, the following year you are overwhelmed.
The Civil Service and State Sector have been allowed to run to seed for decades. Some Governments have produced so much manure that they have actually fed it.
It is now a Herculean task to tackle the bureaucratic dictatorship. You need to have a surgeons eye and nip the critical life-support system rather than hack away at the millions of branches.
We know that this political class have no concept of the war that they should be fighting. They will all lose.
The Market will eventually step in and pull the rug. Be ready. We need to survive financially, individually.
May 30, 2025
Every Government since Thatcher/Major has increased spending, starting with Blair/Brown. The first step is to cut the Civil Service, which is out of control by at least 400,000. That saves £17 billion immediately, as well as more of future pensions, and still leaves 130,000 civil servants.
Second, shut every Quango and return responsibility for governing to MPs! Maybe that would wake them up.
They cut all the DEI spending, already over £40 million a year in the NHS.
Then, pass a law requiring all governments to run a balanced budget. Drastically cut welfare spending, drop all Net Zero spending, most government advertising, and stop all immigration for at least 3 years, remove a fishing license from France for every illegal im migrant they refuse to take back. Then lift the income tax thresholds at all levels to £20k tax-free, cut corperaton to 15%, fully expense R & D, then watch the UK economy grow!
Under this pathetic PM and Government, no chance at all. They will keep digging a spending hole until they disappear into it!!!!
Reply Do try to be realistic. There would be huge redundancy payments and turmoil if you tried to sack 400,000. Who would pay the benefits and keepthe main services running?
May 30, 2025
I am being realistic. The remaining 130,000 Civil servants could pay their benefits and keep the main services running. Yes, huge redundancy payments, but only strictly according to the law, which in my career was capped at three months. The reundandsancy payments are a one off, the £17 billion a year is an annual saving!
Sorry, Sir John, but your attitude represents why government spending is not cut. Because you don’t believe it can be done. Look at Javier Millia in Argentia. All the commentators said it could not be done, but he has done it. If we cannot do what is needed with 130,000 Civil Servants, then the government is doing too much. Here is a simple example. How do you tax your car these days? It is a simple online job, but how many employees have the DVLC made redundant as a result? I would guess at none!
May 30, 2025
I don’t agree that quickly reducing public spending is hard, as long as it is supported by most of the cabinet.
If we were to try to do this through consultation it would take forever as the far-left/civil service would employ delaying tactics.
It can only be done by sacking most of the top brass immediately and stopping all new recruitment, direct or indirect. Any new recruits would need the OK from a minister and a proper justification.
The only way to find out what works is to start shutting down departments and see if any important tasks remain to be done, in which case re-employ enough people to do those tasks.
The cabinet would need to be prepared for heavy opposition form the BBC
Reply As someone who has cut public spending and reduced the functions of the state I am telling you your 400,000 figure for fewer civil servants will not come about.
May 30, 2025
reply to reply….nobody needs a crystal ball for that.
May 30, 2025
“Congress is busy agreeing a further rise in public spending with no sign of big savings built into the budget numbers”
This is Trump’s “Big, beautiful bill” which is projected to increase the US federal deficit as it’s not a balanced budget.
May 30, 2025
It would be interesting to see if the money local councils and government bodies have spent on EVs and net-zero has been cost effective ….can’t find any research anywhere
May 30, 2025
How far off are we from flying, drone cars / taxis in our cities? (And outside our cities?) They will obviously be electric (a manufacturer of a modern, uber cool, flying car for the city, is going to make sure its engine is quiet and doesn’t pump smoke into the air). And what other related type of technology is around the corner? And who will it affect jobs and our economy. Is government doing everything it can to train working class people up to such jobs instead of relying on social security so to get them working and so reduce tax? Skills. The Chinese are highly skills. This is the main reason companies such as iPhone manufacture there. To what degree are our politicians talking about this kind of thing?
May 30, 2025
The iPhone factory in China is unmanned. No skill required at all.
May 31, 2025
Not true. Skilled workers are used for quality control, debugging and in some areas of component manufacturing,
But my main point was why iPhones are being manufactured in China as opposed to USA – in the context of Trump whacking tariffs on Apple to force them to manufacture in the USA which is not how capitalism works (capitalism is about profit not government policy – unless the company is doing something illegal – and manufacturing in the USA would greatly harm iPhone’s profits)
Skills is one of a few important reasons why iPhones are manufactured in China not the USA. Others include: lower labour costs, supply chain and manufacturing infrastructure, automation (which Apple have invested a lot in China), as well as depending on various suppliers in China for various iPhone components.
So what’s your overall point?!
May 31, 2025
That’s what used to be called ‘operational iT jobs’. The lowest level.
My overall point is that China has no advantage once you remove their overwhelming numbers, which the unmanned factory does.
In addition although the Orient has a marginal advantage in IQ, it’s not the average that changes anything but the brilliant. The spikes at 180 – of which we produce a consistent number. They don’t. That’s why we invent everything and then the dullards in politics give it away.
We can’t afford to have the brilliant in Government for a lifetime, that’s why they should be able to do a stint. No professional politicians.
May 31, 2025
‘That’s what used to be called ‘operational iT jobs’. The lowest level’ – But it’s still a job. And better than stacking fruit in a supermarket or no job at all. And this is in the context of Trump wanting to stimulate the manufacturing sector for working class people in the USA. Which of course is ridiculous (not in principle but his plan of action) and at the relatively big cost of damaging Apple Inc and their iPhone brand.
‘That’s why we invent everything and then the dullards in politics give it away’ – I agree with you here but that’s entirely irrelevant to the point I was making.
May 31, 2025
Well, time for a book recommendation …
Ian Morris, ‘Why the West rules for now – The patterns of History and what they reveal about the Future’, 2010, 780 pp (Yes, I know, it is a big book).
IQ numbers in the West and the Orient: worldpopulationreview.com ‘Average IQ by country 2025’ or international-iq-test.com ‘Average IQ by country (2025 update)’.
An IQ of 180 (Lynn says ‘we’ produce a consistent number) is slightly over the 15 σ (standard deviation) on the positive side of the usual Bell curve produced by IQ tests. This would correspond to a fraction of 1/75,000,000 of the tested sample, which would mean slightly less than one person in the UK assuming the whole UK population is tested.
But one person constantly found with such a 180 IQ over the years would satisfy Lynn’s ‘consistent number’.
Oh and BTW Elon Musk is supposed to have been tested to an IQ of 162.
Draw your own conclusion: is Lynn talking rubbish or not?
May 30, 2025
Have you tried looking for ‘audit’, ‘local government’, ‘net zero’?
‘Local Government and Net Zero in England’, National Audit Office, 14/07/2021. 60 pp.
gov.uk 13/01/2022 ‘Local government and the path to net zero: Government response to the Select Committee report’.
niauditoffice.gov.uk 14/09/2023 ‘Approaches to achieving net zero across the UK, 50 pp.
May 30, 2025
Your trust in official ‘reports’ is so touching. I was like that in my 20s.
May 31, 2025
It’s official reporting. Whatever you think of it it is likely to bear more weight in the conduct of public affairs than what you and your ilk are producing/reading.
And BTW you are the one saying things like ‘Parliament exercises our sovereignty’, so tell me why I am so starry-eyed to quote reports where MPs had a major inputs.
May 31, 2025
That’s exactly what the current unfit parliamentary class said about Brexit. They produced all the reports and when the data did not support their case, they massaged it. BUT THE PEOPLE THOUGHT BIG AND WON. OUR IDEAS HAD MORE WEIGHT IN THE CONDUCT OF PUBLIC AFFAIRS.
Also, as you almost admit, this ‘official documentation’ is indoctrination.
It’s what we avoid and it’s what you embrace which is why you are so obsessed with the minutiae and miss the big ideas every time.
That’s why Powell was right when he said ‘The PEOPLE will win in the end.
May 31, 2025
Enoch Powell 1912-1998.
Getting Trumpy-shouty?
June 1, 2025
If you think you live with ‘big ideas’ who am I to disabuse you, specially as your undoubtedly specially trained eyes can see I ‘almost admit’ that official documentation is indoctrination.
Past a certain level it is better not to contradict: as Socrates is supposed to have said ‘Strong minds discuss ideas, average minds discuss events, weak minds discuss people’.
So what were you saying? ‘I am so obsessed with minutiae’, ‘my trust in official reports is so touching’ and that’s just for today.