Just Who Are They Trying To Kid?
A Christmas TV ratings war? Hey, listen up, guys. You need people fighting battles to have a war. What battles were they fighting on Christmas Day, for instance?
Casablanca on BBC 2? A piece of classic cinema history for your delight and entertainment? Nah! The Beeb blew their budget on Jurassic Park on BBC 1, so they were just filling in with a cheapskate, black and white war film instead of an expensive colour film some people might not have seen.
And what was on ITV and Channel 4 while all this was going on? Who remembers! Who watched any of it!
Ratings war? Rating phoney war, more like!
The Liberals can promise the Earth, the Sun, the Moon and the stars, knowing they're not going to have to form the next government.
Labour will promise the Earth – while preparing 99 excuses why they can't deliver if elected.
The Tories can't promise anything much because they expect to get back in and have to do something about their election promises
Labour are a bunch of guys in flat caps with ferrets down their trousers. Well, aren't they? And that Tony Blair. That's not a silly grin on his face - he's having to grit his teeth because of what the ferret is up to! |
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THE LIBERALS' RICH UNCLE
The government allocates money to councils using a formula that takes into account the number of children, schools, old people, roads, etc. in the region.
Naturally, any formula will be generous in some areas and mean in others, and every council complains every year about government meanness, and keeps quiet when it makes a profit.
But when all the numbers have been crunched in the computer, the result is that each council knows exactly how much money it will receive for the coming financial year, no matter how unfair.
As there has been no change in the system this year, each council knows that it will get the same as last year, plus inflation, plus a little more for selected items.
The government hands over a council's allocation with details of how much it has allowed for education, roads, etc. But these figures are only recommendations. In practice, the council is free to spend the money any way it chooses rather like a student grant. That money is paid into the student's bank account and the student then decides whether to spend it on books and stationery, or to blow it on booze.
What Stockport's 'student' council is admitting now is that it has spent so much on booze that it no longer has enough to buy the books that it needs. Worse, it has overspent hoping to make up the deficit out of the following years's 'grant'. Even worse, it has quite cynically overestimated the size of the increase to cover inflation, etc.
When a student overspends recklessly, there's always a bank manager in the background with the power to turn off the tap. Councils always assume that their bank manager, i.e. the government, will just to tell the investors to stump up more and more.
When a council overspends, it is telling the poor old taxpayer, "Open your wallet and say the magic words, Help yourself!"
Do you really want to be the Liberals' rich uncle?
Can you afford to be their rich uncle?
Because that's where the money comes from. Not from 'the government', which has no money of its own, but from the poor old taxpayer.
This is what Liberal government is all about – being liberal with your money and not bothering to ask your permission to spend it!
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