Failing Labour Economics

On Friday there was a very interesting and rather revealing interview with the Chancellor Alistair Darling on the BBC.

The discussion related to the Conservatives’ economic competitiveness policy review headed by John Redwood, and the fact that, unsurprisingly, the Chancellor didn’t agree with the proposals.

In the interview, Alistair Darling suggested to listeners that if George Osborne was going to be a ‘responsible’ Shadow Chancellor, then ‘What you can’t do is sign up to a program which John Redwood has come up with today, which talks about over £21bn worth of cuts without actually saying how you’re going to pay for that’.

As the Chancellor well knows, neither George Osborne nor David Cameron have endorsed the proposals found in the Redwood report (I wish the party had, but the fact remains that they have not).

The Chancellor then went on to add, ‘Because, the only way you can pay for that sort of money coming out the system is by quite savage reductions on things like transport’. Again, as Alistair Darling knows, this is not the case – but to admit so would not suit his and the Labour party’s argument.

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Heathrow Eco-loonie Camp

The CND (Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament) flags fluttering in the breeze signalled the arrival of the unwashed and matted-hair brigade gathering for their latest climate change camp on the outskirts of Heathrow.

Yesterday, fifty of its filthy occupants decided to march towards the airport, banging their drums like primitives and protesting loudly about the supposed current and future environmental impact of air travel.

Okay, so I generally do not agree with the neo-hippies’ claims of impending doom and disaster. However, what really vexed me about this particular protest was not the sight of a group of left-wing nutters masquerading as a friendly bunch of tree-huggers, but the fact that three hundred police officers were posted to supervise their protest and squalid anti-capitalist camp.

This seems to me to be overly excessive, especially at a time when most people in Britain will probably never see that many police in their entire life. I bet the grieving families of poor Garry Newlove and Evren Anil, who I mentioned yesterday, are wishing that at least one of those officers had been patrolling nearby when they were most needed.