If you wouldn’t put the lunatics in charge of the asylum, you’d be mad to put the doctors in control instead. Yet that is what the UK government plans in its NHS reform programme.
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Governments like spending other people’s money but the idea that we should give to charity when using cash-machines should not go unchallenged. What if the person cajoled into donating is adding that gift to their overdraft when they withdraw cash? That’s more likely to add to poverty than relieve it.
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There’s something wrong when unofficial housing statistics are more respected than government data. And there’s something wrong when there are two sets of state figures that disagree. So the Office of National Statistics is right to try to reconcile this mess – but maybe it should simply give up and leave the numbers to the private sector.
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Governments have so chipped away at the tobacco industry that you wonder why it doesn’t simply close down the business.
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Fancy that: the government has had to admit it has not policy for growth. The planned White Paper outlining how it would boost the economy has been cancelled for lack of ideas. But should we worry? Growth is the remit of business, not Whitehall.
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The Department of Business’s attempt to create a super-regulator for companies has been thwarted by the Treasury. This is a turf war between business secretary Vince Cable and chancellor George Osborne, but it is a victory for the corporate sector which has no need for a third regulator.
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Are the violent student demonstrations over student fees that trashed the Tory party HQ connected to the poll tax riots, as commentators ask? Of course they are. But the protests are no more connected with educational funding that the 1990 riots were with local government finance.
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Sir Philip Green has shown how inefficient the civil service is on procurement; now government ministers have to show they are better that their executive. Writing his report was the easy bit, implementing it will test the politicians’ effectiveness.
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There is only one reason for taxing the rich: the poor don’t have enough money to pay their way. Taxing the rich is an unfortunate necessity; it should not be a punishment for success or endeavour. Politicians of all parties should remember that.
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Is Vince Cable the Secretary of State for Business – or the Secretary of State against Business? The Liberal Democrat cabinet minister won plaudits for bashing the banks while in opposition. But in government he is bashing business. Indeed, he is condemning capitalism.
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