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Monday, 23 September 2024

The dead hand of fake optimism



Reeves to promise investment to 'rebuild Britain' in Labour Party conference speech

The Government’s autumn Budget statement will be used to “rebuild Britain” and deliver on the change Labour offered at the election, Rachel Reeves is to pledge.

The Chancellor will make her speech at the Labour Party conference on Monday as ministers seek to move out from under the shadow of a row about donations.

After weeks of warning about a poor economic legacy left by the Conservative government, Ms Reeves is also expected to signal a path towards further public investment, which she will claim is the “solution” to the UK’s growth problem.


Oh dear - further public investment, I hope it's better than that. Let's take a gander at one of the comments to cheer us up on this dull Monday morning:-

Continuing the Blair project, to rebuild Britain as an over populated over urbanised global colony & 3rd World hole with mass migration. For an oligarch & peasant society. In contempt of democracy, with only about 20% Public support.

7 comments:

said...

It's the belief that the state, government, is the best entity to pick winners, winning companies, winning technologies. God help us.

DiscoveredJoys said...

It's not the finding of 'investment' that will be the problem it's getting past the expensive and delaying bureaucracy that precedes it.

See 'Foundation' at https://ukfoundations.co/ . They pick some examples of how excessive bureaucracy has delayed and raised the cost of so many major developments (including house building) that many don't even start. Our economy has stagnated *because of paperwork*.

So planning laws, environmental laws, and Net Zero, all combine to halt investment at birth. Since Reeves is a member of a socialist party, and socialists love bureaucracy and the control it affords, she is arguing that pressing the accelerator on growth will be effective when the government already has its foot firmly on the brake. Spending huge amounts of 'our' money... which will only line the nests of professionals and the public servants without producing anything worthwhile.

Unless she proposes to scrap the existing planning laws... not very likely.

decnine said...

I take some (small) comfort from their apparent intention to hit the buffers going flat out. There won't be any wriggle room for blame transfer.

A K Haart said...

Anon - God help us indeed, the failures of the past are coming round again and we are even less prepared for it.

DJ - thanks for the link, but crikey it's depressing because as you say, socialists love bureaucracy. It's what many of them do and they will never accept that their activities are destructive. The question seems to be how destructive it must be before they notice.

decnine - yes that seems to be our best bet, they hit the buffers good and hard.

Sam Vega said...

What has struck me looking at the conference keynote speeches is how similar they are to the nonsense produced by Kamala Harris in America. Just feelgood lego-language, clipped together to make a promise about the future which everyone must know is going to fail.

It's depressing that they will all end up like that. I voted Reform, partly on the basis that they didn't have a manifesto as such, and that they would be working as a sort of parliamentary pressure group to ask the right questions. But I have the queasy feeling that if they got anywhere near power, it would be more of the same. Perhaps we just need to realise that we are governed by nobody, the blob, a vague bureaucracy, and that legislation doesn't really matter. What matters is resistance to the things that are patently mad.

A K Haart said...

Sam - yes, feelgood lego-language, as if it is merely advertising and isn't supposed to be anything else. It doesn't tackle genuine problems, doesn't reflect reality because it isn't supposed to. Which is also worrying because it means they aren't interested in debate, only lego-language and that's all we'll ever get.

It seems increasingly reasonable to claim that we are governed by nobody and the only purpose of legislation is to extend the bureaucracy.

Tammly said...

I've got nothing to add. Everyone here has said it all.