The brass neck of the woman

 

Subject: The brass neck of the woman.

There is an old fashioned saying “they have a brass neck, in other words they are impervious to what others think of them.

Liz Truss has a brass neck. She holds her ground irrespective of what is said about her and seems immured to criticism, imprisoned in her concept  of what she stands for.

Most people undergoing the criticism she has suffered since announcing the mini budget last week, would have backed off and resigned her post as Prime Minister but not Ms Truss. She is determined to stare out her opponents, to glare down her critics and initially deny any complicity in the financial mess she has made. Her objective to modernise Britain by incentivising the rich to become richer in the hope they would be stimulated to invest in the economy was at best problematic especially so since she did so without waiting for the analysis from the Office of Budget Responsibility

There is no doubt our decline over the last 50 years has in part been due to a serious lack in investment of most things attributable to commerce and industry. To balance the books, 'quantitive easing' was a boon which never stopped giving. It was done without fuss from behind closed doors in the Bank of England, the only indicator was the fall in the value of sterling year on year against most other currencies.

The new Chancellor Jeremy Hunt has kiboshed the Truss/Kwarteng plan reversing the tax cuts and nullifying the spending increases so we are largely back to where we were before the mini budget was announced but suddenly, we are in dire straits with a huge hole in our finances that has to be plugged largely with draconian cuts to our welfare state. Was this the plan all along, is she the fall guy to bring in swinging cuts to the overpowering deadweight Benefits has on  State finances.

Politics being what it is, is little more than an ideological  playground, there is no room for cross-party thinking or solutions which would involve all parties, the rich and the poor, the strong and the weak, in an evolution into much needed 'egalitarianism'.

Why do we only learn now of the massive fiscal imbalance, where was this imbalance two weeks ago, why now all the stories of departmental cuts when the Truss government hadn’t yet had chance to bring into effect any of their policies.

Why are no media commentators commentating on this strange state of affairs, other than to warn us to tighten our belts which is now the new Chancellors line. Where is the Department for Budget Responsibility's report in all these shenanigans, where is the crucial report which it was reported Truss withheld.

There are too many smoke and dagger claims, too much malevolence, too many veiled threats now pointed at us. Is this all a well rehearsed plot to downsize the burden we place on those star investors who Ms Truss placed so much of her faith in.

Do we in the UK need open heart surgery to revive the patient. Are there any surgeons around who are up to the job with the imagination to break the mould and do the things which are not dictated by self interest. The parliamentary merry go round of elected representatives who’s position, income and pension decisions seem dictated by outside influences, the 'pressure groups' and 'think tanks' for who we can probably blame for our current dilemma.

I know that the concept of long term government planning is an anathema to many. It has been repeatedly vilified by the same pressure groups and think tanks who not only have the ear of government but also the press and media. People are inundated by descriptions of Stalinism or Chinese hegemony, cajoled by flights of capitalist fancy and years of virtually zero interest rates. Buy now, pay later, never question the need or the usefulness, only need to consider whether the neighbour has one.

This has been the basis of the consumer society which today is waking up to the shock of a recession. Ill equipped to cope with substantially less, we have become frozen in doubt and anguish about a life of constraint. Not having wished for a new car, or an expensive holiday in one of those far off Shangri-la resorts I will cope easily but fear for those who can’t. The assumptions people who have been encouraged to believe that their rights are being challenged which undermines our resilience and distorted our actual mental profile of who we really are. The kid in Somalia walking a mile to get drinking water, a lack of hospitals or drugs, the rudimentary environment to which we are currently encouraged to give a donatio will not be reached by us we hope but as we slide down the slippery slope of not understanding "there is no such thing as a fee lunch" and that our bloated social catch-net has become unaffordable because of a slight of hand in which wages for jobs were allowed to fall on the proviso that the state would pay the difference between wages offered by private company's  and a living wage by propping the private wage on offer up by a system of benefits, effectively,  an add on state wage.  This gross manipulation of the states social responsibility, subscribing instead to being a contributor to hundreds of thousands of privately owned companies bottom line. It was the only way to make inefficient poorly managed companies viable, a far cry from the social insurance act envisaged in 1947. The rolling up of the threshold at which tax is paid was another economic mirage to make the country and its people feel that the books balanced but tax is a necessary component of the books of account  but we haven't balanced them for a long time.

We haven’t been realistic or firm on anyone. From the outrageous profits of the oil companies, to the bankers bonuses, all viable income streams which should be taxed especially when food banks are becoming the norm. Unfortunately the new chancellor Jeremy Hunt in his statement yesterday avoided  these scared cows, the banks are no go areas like a radiation silo, untouchable.

Watching the unedifying spectacle of politicians and political pundits squawking like demented hens at the state we are in the public have become used to the pantomime of political discourse and don't realise the profound danger the country is in.

Stagflation where inflation remains high and wages remain low takes a special kind of temperament to counter and I'm afraid our softened resolve over years of economic mishandling and the failure to take the action does not put us in a good place to withstand what's coming down the track.