Tuesday, April 8, 2014

Giving to your own

Labour have announced their intentions to allow English cities more power over transport, housing and employment should they win the next UK election. On the surface this looks like a good idea, however, anyone who knows how voting demographics work will realise that all Labour are doing is handing cash over to be wasted by mostly Labour Councils and away from government scrutiny.
BBC.
Labour is to promise English cities more powers over transport, housing and employment to help close the "productivity gap" with London.
If elected, the party will commit to handing £20bn to councils to spend on skills, back-to-work schemes and infrastructure, leader Ed Miliband is expected to say in a speech on Tuesday.
Local authorities will have to bid for cash and put private sector jobs first.
The Labour leader will say the UK needs to "build prosperity" outside London.
This is pretty much on a par with the BBC moving to Manchester and racking up massive transport bills as staff commute from there to London or the big civil servant projects to build large departments outside of the capital. London simply got bigger as more and more people moved there for the range of services it provides in various categories. Yes Labour look like they'll insist on private sector priority, but the private sector will only go where there are skilled workers and Government interference with education has already turned out masses of failed students into the UK. Capital cities always attract both services and industry unless they are simply administrative places. Reversing the tide with the likes of London will simply not work by throwing money at (mostly) Labour local government, it's not like they have a great track record with taxpayers cash now is it? We'll end up with make-work grandiose projects such as tram systems but precious few jobs at the end of them, oh and probably obscenely paid chief executives too as jobs for the political class drones.
I doubt this has been thought out more than simply a good idea to thrill the voters and Labour supporters in the rest of England. It can't work the way they think it will and most of the money will no doubt be wasted.

1 annotations:

English Pensioner said...

Expect more revelations about councils acting like Tower Hamlets if this happens.