Man in a Shed: Nick Clegg, David Cameron & David Willets should shut up

Friday, April 08, 2011

Nick Clegg, David Cameron & David Willets should shut up

At least on social mobility.

Why ?

In short because they have no relevant life experience and are too conflicted by the temptations of political triangulation.

The longer answer is given by Allison Pearson in a spirited article in yesterday's Telegraph. ( If you missed it have a look ). I was thinking of a post on the same lines, but this one hits all the right notes.

At the same time we have attempts to tell the Conservative faithful that Grammar schools aren't the answer ( see this over on the Spectator's coffee house ). Even my leftwing family friends understand Grammar schools are great - as they have their kids in one ! We know the real reason the govt won't allow selection in schools is because of political triangulation, and the need to try to keep the BBC onside.

This reaching for what we engineers call tail pipe solutions of just fixing the results is what the socialists do and why so many of us despise them.

Frankly I'm not feeling very warm towards Messrs Clegg, Cameron & Willetts on this.

1 comment:

James Higham said...: To think these people are "in charge" of us, or so they'd like to believe.; 4:01 pm

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The pound in your pocket

"We used to think that you could spend your way out of a recession and increase employment by cutting taxes and boosting government spending. I tell you in all candour that that option no longer exists." James Callaghan

“The trouble with theoretical economists is that they don't understand that when you have a deficit, you can only finance it by borrowing, and you've got to persuade people that it's worth lending money to you and that they'll get their money back... there's no way of escaping it.” Dennis Healey during the 1976 Stirling Crisis.

"Lenin is said to have declared that the best way to destroy the Capitalist System was to debauch the currency. By a continuing process of inflation, governments can confiscate, secretly and unobserved, an important part of the wealth of their citizens ... Lenin was certainly right. There is no subtler, no surer means of over-turning the existing basis of society than to debauch the currency. The process engages all the hidden forces of economic law on the side of destruction, and does it in a manner which not one man in a million is able to diagnose." John Maynard Keynes, 1920.

"To preserve [the people's] independence, we must not let our rulers load us with perpetual debt. We must make our selection between economy and liberty, or profusion and servitude." Thomas Jefferson, President of the United States of America,1801-1809.

Inflation is taxation without legislation .. Milton Friedman