Breaking the cycle

In case you haven't noticed, I am more than a little sceptical about the coalition governments plans to fix our economy. More than this, I am not convinced that any current political party - or coalition thereof - understands what our economy needs long term for real growth based on wealth rather than pseudo growth based on debt.

I believe that we are set for a decade of, at best, stagnation and inflation - stagflation they used to call it - and, at worst, a full blown, full on depression that will have profound and long term consequences for this nation, its people, their living standards and prosperity. Nothing I have seen from government or read in the media has changed my mind about this - indeed, I've read various articles from various sources which tend to support my view.

However, even if I am wrong and this coalition does manage to stave off the worst case scenario in the short to medium term there remains the problem of what happens in the future when we are back to where we were - say - in 2000?

This coalition - from both the Lib Dems and Conservative flanks - have made much of how they are a "progressive" government. Both the Prime Minister and his Chancellor have claimed that they are progressive politicians and dedicated to the causes of progressivism - and, by implication, the fallacies that ideology is based on.

Consequently, there is no reason to believe that once the economy is "fixed", they will not resort to throwing money into schemes and ideas which progressivism favours - and all that entails. For me there are two major problem areas with this - welfare and manufacturing.

The problem regarding welfare is perhaps the most obvious. Progressivism insists on certain universal "truths" which are either uncertain or patently wrong. For example, the belief that crime is linked to poverty and that if you give people enough money they won't commit crime is clearly daft - but it is considered a "truth" by progressives.

Hence they pour billions of pounds every year into "supporting" criminals and their lifestyles in the vain hope this will solve the problem. It doesn't, of course, because crime is not caused by poverty but by greed, avarice and laziness - and welfare supports all of these traits.

That's just one example of many, but the point I'm trying to make is that to genuinely have a hope of fixing Britain's problems in the long term we need a government committed to breaking the cycle of dependency which so many people in Britain have fallen into. That needs a government that is tough and, above all, socially conservative - because any government that subscribes to the social liberal position is going to fall into the same traps as previous social liberal governments.

There isn't a hope in hell that this coalition will have either the will or the strength needed to break that cycle so the only conclusion that can be reached is that, even in the unlikely event that they do sort out our current problems, they will only make the same mistakes as Brown, Blair and Major.

Remember, before the "credit crunch" struck and the reality of our "economic miracle" was exposed, Cameron and his party backed the Labour government spending plans completely. It was only after the dire situation was revealed that the Tories decided to change tack - and then only marginally.

They do not have the answers. They don't even understand the questions. All they have is the same misguided beliefs that Brown and Blair had and the result will be exactly the same.

Disaster

Shock, horror! MP exposed as a lying, cheating hypocrite!

So it turns out that, while promoting himself as a decent family man during the election campaign - devoted to his wife of 26 years and their children - the Lib Dem MP and EUphile, Chris Huhne was actually conducting a long term, clandestine affair with another woman.

As others have pointed out before, there was a time when such behaviour was deemed sufficiently bad that ministers were expected to resign. These days they cling on to their jobs pretty much regardless of what they get up to - which says a lot about the moral standards of our modern world and the current generation of politicians.

Perhaps the only real surprise here, though, is that anyone should be surprised that an MP should turn out to be a lying, cheating hypocrite.

That's partly the trouble - we've all become so used to our MPs being skilled in the art of deception that we're no longer surprised or even bothered by it. I've no doubt that Huhne's constituency party will rally around him and, by the time of the next election, it will have been sufficiently forgotten about for the electorate to vote him back in again.

But the reality is that all this stuff builds up over time. MPs wonder why the public no longer believe them or have and trust in them when they have repeatedly seen that these politicians have no loyalty to even those closest to them - so why are they amazed to find the public doesn't trust them either?

If they really want to restore public faith in politics - or rather politicians - then this would be a good place to start. Huhne should resign as a minister and stand down as an MP - if he doesn't then Cameron should sack him and his party should deselect him.

If they want us to trust them then they better start giving us reasons why we should - and one way of doing that is by not giving jobs to lying, cheating hypocrites.