As the public sectariat go on the march to protect their grip on our wallets, Liam Halligan, chief economist at Prosperity Capital Management, asks a few questions:

Why aren't Osborne and Co. explaining these catastrophic realities [of our debt serving costs] and their impact on our medium-term ability to maintain our public services, using them to rally support for austerity measures that are long overdue? Why aren't such stark facts thrown back into the face of those who claim that the Tories' retrenchment plans are "driven by ideology rather than necessity"?

View full article here

Tyranny of the EU Commission: Nigel Farrage: 'bombings and bailouts what on earth are we doing?'
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AqKdDNM7jpQ

I always have thought about the EU as an economic union.
No more. And I don't want to be a part of anything that's going on today.
I reject it's politics, I reject it's policies and I strongly reject it's military aggression.

Count me out.

I would suggest that there are far too many people in employment in the public sector. Regardless of whether we are skint or not. Many of the jobs just should not exist. I had expected the Conservatives to do something about this as an issue in itself. But it seems they're afraid of the public sector lumpen mass.

On the 21st of this month I was approached yet again by our Council seeking to consult:

On 21/03/2011 10:06, Katie Hamilton wrote:
>
> Dear Sir/Madam
>
> HERTFORDSHIRE’S DRAFT BUS STRATEGY AND INTALINK STRATEGY CONSULTATION
>
> The consultation of Hertfordshire’s draft Bus Strategy and Intalink Strategy has started and you are invited to make comments by 6 June 2011. The Bus Strategy provides a clear policy lead and identifies those strategies that will address the problems in the county. The Intalink Strategy supports the Bus Strategy, and sets out the required standards for passenger transport information.
>
> Also accompanying these 2 strategies is a Strategic Environmental Assessment (SEA) Environmental Report. This is an assessment which has considered the environmental and social/economic implications of delivering the Bus and Intalink Strategies.
>
> We are keen to receive your views on all 3 of these documents, therefore, to view and comment on the draft Bus Strategy, Intalink Strategy and SEA report, please go to the following web link: http://www.hertsdirect.org/ltp.
>
> Alternatively, hard copies of these documents are also available on request, and full copies will be available for reference at all Hertfordshire libraries (with electronic access to the document available on library computers), and at Front Reception, County Hall.
>
> We invite you to complete an online questionnaire at http://www.hertsdirect.org/ltp, or alternatively please send your comments via e-mail to LTP3@hertscc.gov.uk or write to:
>
> LTP3 Comments
> Hertfordshire County Council,
> Transportation Planning & Policy,
> CHN205 County Hall, Pegs Lane,
> Hertford, SG13 8DN.
>
> Details of how the comments have been taken into account in the final document will be sent to all consultees and made available on Hertsdirect. I look forward to receiving your comments.

> Yours faithfully.

> Katie Hamilton
>
> Transport Planning and Policy Officer
>
> Hertfordshire County Council
>
> Postal Point: CHN205
>

As an individual - my reply:

-------- Original Message --------
Subject: Re: HERTFORDSHIRE’S DRAFT BUS STRATEGY AND INTALINK STRATEGY CONSULTATION
Date: Mon, 21 Mar 2011 13:00:25 +0000
From: Derek Reynolds
To: Katie Hamilton


Dear Madam,

Thank you for your offer of a consultation.

Unfortunately due to all previous experiences of this kind from Council, and having no notice paid to or taken of either myself, certain colleagues, and I suspect many members of the public, I will not be taking part in such a consultation. It is said that without dialogue nothing can progress. Such consultations are without dialogue - only rhetoric. They exhibit every symptom of diktat, which leaves those alleged as being 'consulted' as insulted.

I would however offer some advice for members of the Council and their various strategy assessment and consultation teams: Disband yourselves. The result would be to cut a huge swathe through unnecessary Council expenses, and channelled in the correct way, improve the services most needed for tax payers. If this makes it necessary for members now employed in such teams to seek employment elsewhere, welcome to the club.

The only evidence of 'consultation' that Council takes of members of the public, is that done through cameras mounted on tall poles. Are you so far removed from reality that this is the closest you dare come?

Without prejudice, but with increased frustration -

Derek Reynolds
St Albans.

They are neither wanted, nor needed. The masses have been trained well. To think like an individual attracts ridicule, suspicion, and resentment. The thought that everyone should 'chip-in' to the collective immediately creates imbalance. That imbalance requires regulation, enter the 'Committee', the fate of the individual as such, is soon after sealed as unacceptable. You will comply. In some things I still do, but in other ways I'm inclined to be Mr Flatpack - turning sideways has its advantages.

Halligan overlooks two other possibilities:

1. The Conservative command view a large public sector just as favourably as the Labour set do. The Civil Service will presumably have laid it on thick about how terrible it would be to return to the levels of public sector workers in the dim and dingy years of only 13 years ago.

2. They have no concrete values and principles of their own. Halligan almost touches on it when he says "It wasn't so long ago, remember, that Osborne and Co. were pledging to "match Gordon Brown's spending plans by sharing the proceeds of growth". Those were the very plans – as some of us warned at the time – which took the UK further down the road to fiscal perdition." The Conservative plan before the fiscal shitstorm was 'What Gordon Brown is doing with a bit added here and a bit shaved off there'. Once the world started doing austerity Osborne & Co. position themselves as the most austere in the room. All they are doing is spotting a trend and going with it.

Despite opponents of austerity claiming the cuts are ideological there is no ideology behind them. There is no major sign that the State is going to retreat any time soon. No wholesale getting out of our way. No arbitrary returning of liberties because it is right.(ie smoking, privacy on what we do with our money, reducing the census to merely counting people.) All Osborne is doing is getting the sums to add up a little bit quicker than Brown and now Milliband/Balls would have done.

Time and again there are claims in the press that Osborne is something of a tax radical - for lower taxes, for flatter taxes and whatever else. Even his inching towards combining NI and Income Tax is already being poo-pooed by the likes of Norman Lamont as having been thought of and dismissed years ago. One of the reasons given by Lamont is that they realised there would be losers. Funny no one seems to mind when it is the taxpayer being the loser. The link between contributions and pensions is broken. It is only the fear of change maintaining the fiction that NI isn't Income Tax by another name.

The TUC march could have been bigger . Much bigger .

But the Poles and other migrant workers dont see themselves as threatened by any cuts , and they wont have joined a union , replacing the displaced British workers . After all , why join a union that cant protect the people you`ve replaced .?
And the tax system is so dire especially for manufacturing that obviously there is no manufacturing industry worthy of the name , thus no workers in manufacturing .
One of the reasons for the ridiculous tax system is the carbon tax ,which wont be had in the other countries , although they will get a cut out of it in the form of aid . So we help them to undercut and grow .
Workers are expensive in this country , but it`s not because they are rich . Other countries have richer but less expensive workers , the main reason will be they dont have government imposed costs .
There wont be any international truckers on the march as there isnt an international trucking industry. Not surprising when a British lorry has to pay taxes and tolls abroad but a foreign truck pays nothing when in the UK .
I dont think the farmers and fishermen see any % in the marchers "alternative " . If there can be an alternative while being in the EU .
The march could have been bigger , if the union leaders did their jobs properly .

To develop the theme in my previous post, democracy is impossible without representation. Or perhaps Dr. North has identified two different kinds of 'demos'. Right now, we are ruled by 'the people' singular - a single mob with a single idea only at any given time. What we need is rule by people plural.

Sandy Rham hints at what is needed in his reply:

I might juggle the arithmetic slightly, but I suggest this is what's needed: a new political class consisting of genuine representatives - hundreds of thousands of them, each representing no more than about 150 people. This is the largest count any man can genuinely represent. Any more than that and he no longer represents 'people plural' any more, but 'the people' singular again - a mob.

The kind of protests I don't like.
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article ... ondon.html

Yes ... I think we are stumbling towards something here ... the idea of a system that represents the individual rather than the mob. That suggests, possibly, a tiered approach ... with an electoral college voting for MPs, rather than direct elections. 150 people each vote for one elector - 150 of those (unpaid) in turn vote for one MP?

About the same number as a blockleiter then. It's already hard enough to find a smaller number of honest, competent councillors and MPs: where will the extra paid reps come from?
Much better to empower the individual vis-a-vis local and central govt. At present letters and complaints are only treated seriously if sent by an elected member.

Your bottom tier electors would be unpaid ... their only statutory duty would be to elect an MP ... maybe 400 people vote for one elector

I am beginning to warm to this idea ... update it to the internet age, where it is no longer tied to a geographical location, and we might be getting somewhere.

I declare myself officially the first Wapentaker
If one in a hundred were to take a weapon Westminster would listen ;)