Making Cuts: Are We In Danger of Self-Harming

On Monday this week Newsnight ran a report on 'Where does the public think the axe should fall?'. I watched in horror as desperate members of the public volunteered to wield the axe. It was like watching a group of self-harmers up close and live.

This citizen's jury was rounded up by the renowned consultancy firm, Price Waterhouse Coopers to find out, ahead of the coalition government's Spending Review in October, where the public think the cuts should be made.

The first blow was foreign aid. We should not be ring-fencing foreign aid, said this jury. We need to look after our own at a time like this. Nothing was sacred - certainly not the holy cow of universal welfare benefits and that fatted calf of job seekers allowance meant to feed those workless scroungers must be put on half rations.

Should we be surprised by this response? Not really. When David Cameron and Nick Clegg insist that reducing the deficit 'is the most important issue facing Britain' and no-one disagrees then our citizen's jury are rather like hapless survivors on a sinking ship with a pessimistic captain at the helm, desperately deciding who should be saved and who should be allowed to go under.

All over the country, people are making special cases for their service to be saved. Of course we agree that cuts should be made, they say, but not our hospital – it’s essential. Not our pensioners’ community centre – where would they go? Not this facility for our youth – do you want them hanging about on your street with no future? The louder they shout, the more likely they are to be heard; and certainly, the government have caved in to strong local protest groups. Better fight than not, then; but this approach can’t save us all and tends to be divisive – pitting one beleaguered community against another and allowing the government to lower our horizons and buckle under the weight of the budget deficit.

I think this focus must be reversed if we are to save ourselves and stop self-harming. If our only view of the British economy is one of a sinking ship then we are all losers.

We need to focus on economic growth, not the budget deficit. How can we grow the British economy? What ideas do the coalition government have about that? What new sectors have they targeted for investment and development that will create the jobs we all need? They need to think big not small, local and limited.

Big Potatoes is the manifesto of a group who do believe in innovation and growth and thinking big. Be bold. Pick up a copy and chuck the axe away.

Working For Profit? You’re Having A Laugh!

This was the response of a group of eco-businessmen in St David’s, Wales when interviewed by Paul Mason from BBC’s Newsnight for his report on What’s wrong with Britain.

All five businessmen thought the idea of maximising profit was old hat. They tell Paul that they have learnt their lesson from Nature.

"Nothing in nature maximises," said Andy Middleton, adventure company boss and deep green business guru. "Trees don't ask 'how high can I grow?'"

The buzzword today is optimization not maximization. It allows one to manoeuvre and be more flexible. I presume that - rather like in Nature - if you find yourself in a desert, it’s better to be a dwarf shrub rather than a giant redwood. How different from our Victorian predecessors who sought to tame nature to our needs.

The talk is all about decent margins, low margins, tight overheads and labour intensive rather than machine production. A woman who owned a pottery design business boasted about employing lots of local labour in routine, repetitive jobs that would be better done by machines or cheap labour abroad.

Philip Blond from ResPublica argues for devolving power to the users and re-localising the economy.

All of this smacks of less growth or no growth and low horizons.

‘It’s not capitalism’ says Paul Mason.

True enough. It isn’t capitalism and I ought to be happy about that; after all I’ve argued against capitalism since my University days. But I’m not. The alternative suggested here is even less progressive. At least social progress was driven by the self interest of individual capitalist entrepreneurs. These businessmen are eschewing progress in favour of limiting growth, of allowing nature to determine our boundaries.

Britain’s lifestyle businessmen may feel good about shedding the image of ruthless profiteers but their debts are bankrolled by profit-making countries like India and China and our unprofitable industries are being bought up by those self-same countries.

If British bosses are fighting shy of bigger and better then it’s no surprise that many workers in Britain are being told to make do with less. The vitriol spewed over the BA strikers recently, is an illustration of this trend.

We shouldn’t accept this. We need more than a living wage. It’s only by being dissatisfied with our lot and aspiring for more that human progress evolves at all.