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The placemen Britain’s charities and quangos are now stuffed to the gunwales with Labour placemen, writes Fraser Nelson in the Telegraph.
Not news to you, perhaps, but news to many.
What can be done? Dante placed the simonists in the Eighth Circle, turned upside down in large baptismal fonts cut into rock, with their feet set ablaze, but I’m thinking in the shorter term.
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What can be done?
Um, cut off their funding?
Sorry, I’ll get me coat…
Agreed RAB – a “volutary sector” thing that is funded by tax money is not really “voluntary” (unless one has a “Maoist” view of what voluntary means – see Guido for what I am talking about, although he is rather cruel to well meaning IDS).
However, private doners can also be tricked and cheated (such as the various people who funded charitable foudations in Chicago – that Comrade Barack Obama and Comrade Bill Ayers, and so on, looted for their political projects).
It should be a general principle that people should not profit by charitable work.
A charity is something where people give up their money and their TIME (time RUNNING the charity) for the benefit of others.
It the “charity” is, in fact, run by paid “professionals” who got their jobs from adverts in the Guardian newspaper ……
Then it is not a charity – it is a scam.
Labour placemen, Tory placemen, what’s the diff?
We’d be wiser simply to think in terms of “The Party”, and thus to recognise that what we have are Party placemen.
Sean Gabb’s prescription is looking more and more like the only possible course of action which effect substantive change.
Of course, to implement it would require a political leader with balls bigger than Baron Thatcher’s. And there is no-one on the horizon in ANY of the major democracies who fits that description.
It is possible that the coming economic crunch will provide an opportunity. Cost cutting has to be done. Stealing money from taxpayers (or borrowing it from somewhere else and committing future taxpayers to repay the loan), to give to “charities” will not rank high on the priority list. Plus is has the advantage that “no social services will be affected and no civil servants laid off”, a cant phrase which any politician would love to be able to say.
We shall see: The tribe best described as “The definition of insanity is doing the same thing over and over and expecting different results” meets “What cannot go on forever, won’t”.
The numbers do not add up D.C.
Getting rid of the BBC and the quangos would not save 1% of the money that needs to be saved.
“But it would help change the climate of opinion – so that in the long term….”
Sadly this is the long term – there is no more time.
Agreed. Have to start somewhere.
Removing the ‘nattering nabobs of negativism’ (to recycle a apposite phrase in a completely opposite context) would greatly reduce the ‘signal to noise’ ratio and would be seen to be a ‘brave’ move. ( How ugly are things, that mere fiscal prudence will be seen as ‘brave’!).
The ‘placemen’ would clearly be seen to be whining about their own interests, especially the “news” quadrant. (Interesting side question: could the Grauniad survive without government ad revenue?).
I suspect that there are large portions of the public who recognize that the media are biased, that multi-culti happy-clappy is a failure and that things have to change and will, likely in a catastrophic way.
Beyond that, I am sure that there is a LOT of money which the government *gives away* without expectation of consideration in return. In Canada that number is upwards of $50 Billion. That is money which is just plain given away! Quangos, the UN and other sinkholes are included in that number. But they are a small portion of the whole. They are the most vocal. It will be difficult if not impossible to cut any small portion, so long as all the rest can act as the chorus.
Just one example: the incredible astounding economic idiocy of the green religion is now clear. The effects of the ‘Green Energy’ ponzi scheme are clear, and coming home to roost in Germany already. But so long as the chorus keeps getting paid to sing, little headway will be made to stop wasting money.
“A charity that relies in the main part on taxes is no more a charity than a prostitute is your girlfriend.”
H/T Guido, who said it first.