Thoughts and Opinions On Today's Important Issues

Thursday, October 15, 2009

Tory England Would Slash Public Service



There is some method in my BLOGs over the past few days concerning outsourcing and slashing the public service. You will read the reason tomorrow.

Some critics of mine believe that I dream up conspiracy theories just to be outrageous. Not true.

It is an easy way for them to mock rather than to try and develop an understanding of what is really taking place in our City.

What I do is look at relevant facts and try to piece them together in a way that makes some sense out of them to try to figure out what is happening especially when there is a concerted effort by those in power to hide information from us. Not only to hide but to mislead us as well.

Am I 100% correct in what I hypothesize? I wish.

In the border file for instance, I believe that my musings are getting closer to what the truth really is. No one outside of a very select circle will really know the plans of Governments, not unlesss there is litigation with people under oath when the process will ensure that most of it will be disclosed.

I really do not believe that many people will be prepared to lie under oath in front of a judge and risk jail time for perjury to accomplish some grand scheme.

This is a long introduction to try and justify my comments about a conspiracy by Governments in Windsor, Toronto, Ontario, Canada and elsewhere to try and crush their public service unions first and then other powerful unions such as what happened in the automoblie industry.

I suggested that Canada had a prominent role to play in this quoting a story in the Times of London:
  • "Philip Hammond, the shadow chief secretary to the Treasury, said the Conservatives were looking for “serious efficiency savings”, but refused to put a figure on how much would be cut from spending.

    A Tory government would be determined to safeguard basic public services, said Hammond: “I hope civil servants are not simply going to sit around the table and come with a series of options which cuts everything at the front line and leaves the mandarins’ back office alone.”

    Hammond revealed he had recently met a delegation of politicians from Canada, who were responsible for a radical 20% cut in spending imposed by the federal government in the 1990s.

    “The psychological tactics they used to get ministers to work together, looking at it as a shared problem rather than a series of departmental problems, were important,” said Hammond.

    The two architects of Canada’s programme review, Jocelyne Bourgon, who was the country’s top civil servant, and Marcel Massé, a former minister, cut 47,000 civil service jobs."

I was right.

Unfortunately the English Conservatives probably had not heard of the Edgar (aka Eddie) Back To Work Protocol fiasco or else they might have backed off for a few more months until its memory faded away.

It was a major setback in Ontario. If I am right about the concerted effort, look what happened to poor David Miller the Mayor of Toronto as a result. He is not running again.

Here is another story out of London for you to read published by the Telegraph. After you digest it, I dare you to tell me I am wrong:
  • "George Osborne plans biggest public spending cuts for 30 years

    A new era of austerity would be ushered in by a Conservative victory in the general election after George Osborne announced the biggest cuts in public spending for 30 years.


    Published: 06 Oct 2009

    The shadow chancellor set out a detailed range of cuts, including a one-year pay freeze for five million public sector workers, which, he said, would save the taxpayer £23 billion over the next five years...

    But in a calculated political gamble, Mr Osborne said that he was simply being “honest” about the economic difficulties facing the country. He pleaded with the public to accept that everyone had to face up to the challenges ahead...

    In a frank assessment, Mr Osborne gave warning that Britain was “sinking in a sea of debt”. While public sector workers would bear the brunt of cuts, middle-class families would also be asked to share the burden, he said.

    Measures included:

    A one-year freeze on public sector pay from 2011 for all those earning more than £18,000, except members of the Armed Forces.

    A £50,000 cap on the maximum pension payments for senior civil servants

    Reducing the cost of Whitehall bureaucracy by a third, saving more than £3billion...

    Mr Osborne’s plans for a wide-ranging public sector pay freeze dwarfed the Government’s earlier recommendation to peg back the pay of certain highly paid public sector workers. Union leaders reacted by threatening industrial action over any attempt to deny pay rises.

    Mr Osborne insisted, however, that only drastic action and “difficult decisions” could rescue the economy. “This is about character as well as policy,” he said. “Now we face the biggest challenge.

    “How to build the sort of Britain we want in the face of the largest deficit in the developed world. There cannot be one rule for Westminster and Whitehall and another rule for everyone else...”

    Mr Osborne added: “A pay freeze of the scale I’m talking about is the equivalent to saving 100,000 public sector jobs. And I say to every public sector worker it is the best way to try to protect your job during this difficult period.”

You will not believe the impact of this action in Canada and what I will have to say about it. Come back tomorrow and read.