THE ECONOMY

Slicing Up a Non-Existent Cake
A Plan to Prosper
The Next Step to Recovery
The Domestic Economy
A “Living” State Pension
City Bankers And Their Bonuses
MG Rover Noses In Troughs
Spending Cuts + Common Sense

 

 

Our politicians are still discussing how to slice up the cake  - there isn’t one – 21/12/2009

 

I read with interest that our political leaders are still stuck with the argument of how to slice up the cake.

Like adult dysfunctional children, but children none the less, fighting around the Christmas tree for the last chocolate Santa, they negotiate and argue, then discuss and reach accords. Finally as all else has failed, they agree that something should be done, but for the life of them all, they know not what to do. Finally they triumphantly produce some legal political publicity speak drivel that they have agreed that their agreement is that something should be done… and they all agree on that … definitely.

I am not just referring to the Global Warming talks in wherever it was … I just forget where … after all, it was always going to be an irrelevance … but I am referring to that, and all other areas of politics in current times.

Our party politicians, having reached the stage some months ago where there was universal agreement that government expenditure was massively exceeding taxation revenues, primarily because corporate profitability and therefore corporation tax revenues to the treasury had disappeared in a puff of smoke, they agreed that expenditure needed to be cut.

A revelation in cross party political accord.

However, I note that Gordon Brown went somewhere the other day, I think it was the day after the Chancellors budget speech, and promptly announced another 1.5 billion of expenditure on some pet project of his.

In addition, David Cameron wants to ring fence the National Health Service from any financial cuts whatsoever, I guess because he mistakenly thinks it is political suicide not to do so.

Further out, neither political party will talk about defence budget cuts whilst our brave lads are being blown to smithereens because they have got the wrong body armour.

Here are some home truths which broadly speaking the rest of the country knows, but which it would seem that our politicians are blissfully unaware of –

1)      We are not in the least bit interested in Gordon Brown’s pet projects any longer, and we do not believe him anyway

2)      The national health service is the most tragic waster of public expenditure ever devised, and any business manager in the private sector worth his salt would dearly love to have the opportunity to get hold of it

3)      The number of civil servants working in the ministry of defence is 87,000 which is roughly 1 civil servant for every 2 fighting men – an example of truly ridiculous management levels if ever there was one.

The current political discussions are acknowledging the need to holdback public expenditure, whilst they fight over how to slice up the none existent cake.

It is vaguely reminiscent of some time I spent with a company at the end of the 1980s. They too spent  their time discussing how to slice up the cake until I politely pointed out to them that there was no cake, the company was bust, and if the banks and the regulators found out they would be closed down tomorrow.

Now, I am not saying that our company called The United Kingdom Limited is bust, far from it, but until the economy recovers, and taxation revenues recover with it, we have no money to spend. End of story, no negotiation, no pay rises for the public sector, no additional expenditure, nothing … not one little bit.

In other words, there is no cake to slice in any which way what so ever, no matter how long you discuss it.

However, there is a huge amount of public expenditure which is being totally and completely wasted, and that is not restricted to just the public services other than the NHS.

There are huge numbers of people in all our public services swanning around doing … not a lot.

I am not necessarily suggesting that there should be huge numbers of redundancies in public services, but I am suggesting that those who are in public services might like to consider what they did today, and was it really the good value for the money which they were paid.

If you are working in our public services, and you come to the conclusion that the work that you did today was not truly good value for the money that you were paid, then please change your ways, leave immediately, or wait to be fired.

Generally speaking, I am not referring to the lower worker levels of our public services – I am referring to those at the top – the very top levels.

It is perfectly possible to maintain services by taking up the slack in public services, and save the Country billions of pounds in the meantime.

It is just that our politicians are not business managers, they would not know a profit margin if it jumped up and bit them in the face, and they are scarred witless by the public sector and loosing their votes.

 This is a time for statesmanship and firm management.

 

 A Plan for the UK – Not Just To Survive But To Seriously Prosper! 4/1/2010

 

In order to understand in full detail, all the issues surrounding the UK’s current economic malaise, one really need do no more than to read the front page of the Sunday Times yesterday.

However, for those who did not see the article concerned, allow me to paraphrase the main issues for you, and bear in mind that throughout these figures, it is the Private Sector which  pays for the Public Sector through income tax and taxation on corporate profits.

Since this Labour government was elected in 1997 –

We now have nearly one million more people employed in the Public Sector (914,000).

That is now 1/5^th or 20% of the entire working population who are funded by the remainder.

Public Sector average earnings are £1,417 per year more than the average earnings in the Private Sector.

Public Sector employees standard working week is 35 hours per week compared to the Private Sector’s 37.5 hours per week.

Public Sector employees have 3 or 4 more days paid holiday per year.

Public Sector employees have 3.3 more days off due to sickness each year.

Public Sector employees have 13.4% more of their total gross salary paid into their pensions by their employer (that means us).

Public sector employees retire at an average age of 58 whereas Private sector employees generally work to age 65.

 

Let us not be too complicated.

WE SIMPLY CANNOT AFFORD IT.

Certainly, we cannot afford it until Corporate UK Ltd starts making profits again, and paying the levels of corporation tax that they were paying two years ago.

1)      However, if we are going to return to the sort of corporate profits that were producing the level of corporation tax that it yielded to the Treasury two years ago, then quite obviously we need to get people spending in the high street again.

2)      In the meantime, if we are going to reduce the current massive Government overspend on Public services, we need to economise on our public expenditure and make sure that we get seriously good value for our money, and that does not necessarily mean massive redundancies in the Public sector as that would create an even bigger problem through unemployment.

SO HOW CAN WE ACHIEVE THESE TWO GOLDEN OBJECTIVES ?

1)      We immediately increase the State Pension (currently £95 per week) to £200 per week for every person over age 65. We can do this by “repossessing” the SERPS (State Second Pension) benefits that have been transferred into private pensions over the last 30 years, and which amounts to several hundred billion pounds.

2)      We start making our Public Servants behave sensibly with our money, which means cutting out all the ridiculous expenditure items that we are all very well aware of, and it means instilling a sense of personal financial responsibility into every single Public Sector employee in the County.

 

To Review the following subjects on this website – just click the links –

A living state pension –

HOT TOPICS – “The Economy – There Is A Solution – 23/11/2009”  http://www.rutlandpolitics.co.uk/the-economy-%e2%80%93-there-is-a-solution-23112009/

BIG ISSUES – “The Economy – A Living State Pension” http://www.rutlandpolitics.co.uk/the-domestic-economy/

BIG ISSUES – “Pensions – A Living State Pension – Mr Brown Broke Your Pension” http://www.rutlandpolitics.co.uk/pensions-2/

 

Government expenditure -

HOT TOPICS  – Our Politicians Are Still Discussing How To Slice UpThe Cake 21/12/2009 http://www.rutlandpolitics.co.uk/our-politicians-are-still-discussing-how-to-slice-upthe-cake/

BIG ISSUES – “People In Public Life – MPs Salaries And Expenses” http://www.rutlandpolitics.co.uk/people-in-public-life-realy-should-know-better/

BIG ISSUES – “Our Armed Forces – MOD Budget Chaos” http://www.rutlandpolitics.co.uk/re-instating-our-armed-forces/

BIG ISSUES – “The Economy – MG Rover Noses In Troughs” http://www.rutlandpolitics.co.uk/the-domestic-economy/

BIG ISSUES – “The Police Force – Scotland Yard Go On A Jolly” http://www.rutlandpolitics.co.uk/respect-for-the-police-force/

BIG ISSUES – “The Economy – Spending Cuts + Common Sense” http://www.rutlandpolitics.co.uk/the-domestic-economy/

BIG ISSUES – “The Economy – City Bankers And Their Bonuses” http://www.rutlandpolitics.co.uk/the-domestic-economy/

 

So, that is how it can be done.

But now show me a politician that has the courage to say it, and then do it, a politician that still has his/her morals and beliefs intact, a politician who is not bound by the party political line, and above all, a politician who is not besotted with his own self aggrandisement or personal wealth creation.

Because I want to vote for him/her!

These people do exist in our politics, but we need to recognise them, and then give no quarter to the others, regardless of our own preferred party political allegiances.

 

 The Next Step To Recovery

 

Regardless of the result in the general election, any incoming new Government, of whatever political persuasion, was always going to have to cut expenditure, and increase taxation. The only question was, in what areas and to what degree.

The Cameron and Clegg team have now produced their emergency budget and we can see precisely where they want to cut and where they want to tax.

However, no matter how you dress it up, if you remove over £40billion from the economy, there is bound to be a knock on effect. It is estimated that there will be approx 700,000 people who will no longer have a job in the Public Sector. That is an awful lot of people who are not earning, and not spending their salaries in the high street.

Is there likely to be a double dip to the recession? Of course there is. Unless the Government can arrange for some large sums of money to be fed into the economy from somewhere, I cannot see how we can avoid further substantial recessionary pressures such as these.

In effect, having done what they need to do in terms of cuts and increased taxation, the Government now urgently need to consider the other side of the equation.

Where, when and how are they going to rebuild the economy?

We certainly cannot do what UK Governments have traditionally done in the past, re-inflate the property market and encourage people to borrow more money again. That was the cause of the problem in the first place, and many people are now facing personal debt that is going to be very difficult for them to redeem over the years ahead.

You may think that it is impossible to find extra money to pour into our economy. After all, we have just agreed that there is no money left. However, this is not the case, there is money available, if you know where to look, and you are prepared to be radical and imaginative.

Since 1978, company and occupational pension schemes, have been encouraged to opt out of the state earning related pension (S2P as it is now known), and people with private personal pensions have been able to do so since 1988. This has been done by “refunding” substantial amounts of individual national insurance contributions directly into peoples private or company pensions.

The amount of money which has been “refunded” from the DSS for each year for each such person obviously varies as it is dependent on their salary at the time of the refund being passed across. However, the average annual refund per person has been of the order of £2,000 per year.

Quite obviously, over the years concerned and for the huge numbers of people involved, the total funds that have now accumulated to private and company pension schemes from the DSS, must now be of the order of several hundred £ billion. 

Step one.

If the Government could gain access to this collective pension pool and use it to provide a proper state pension of say £200pw, immediately, then the money coming into the economy, through increased pensioner high street spending, would probably resolve the recession overnight.

It is rare that the accumulated benefits of this element of a person’s pension will exceed more than £50 or £60 per week in retirement income at retirement, and I am sure that everybody would be happy to exchange this for a non means tested state pension of say £200 per week.

Step Two.

With such a simplified, across the board, state pension, there would be no necessity to create the additional state pension that the Government is currently wrestling with, and which the public simply see as even more taxation. There are a number of government bodies who are currently involved on trying to create a new state pension, and they would cease to be required.

The calculation of, the administration of, and the payment of state pensions would be massively simplified, to the extent that not only would central Government be able to lose large numbers of related  civil service staff, but also local Government would be able to do the same. For instance, we would be able to lose a  large number of local state assisted benefits, such as rent rebates, council tax assistance and even bus passes, along with a large reduction in the civil servant staff who currently administer them. 

Step three.

Making the high street more accessible to the pensioner and more competitive for the retailer will be a huge boost to local employment opportunities. Bringing back the local shop into the high street has long since been an ambition of many a politician.

Obviously making huge sums available to the high street retailer through this sort of substantial across the board state pension increase, will be an enormous advantage. After all, most pensioners will not necessarily be spending their newly increased state pension on new cars, but they are far more likely to buy some proper food, turn the heat back on in the house, get the house repaired, and go to the local pub a bit more often.

If we can take the advantage of these new cash inflows to the local economies and encourage high street development, then employment and local communities will benefit.

Currently there is a huge discrepancy in overhead costs between the chain store grocery retailer and the high street butcher and baker. This is largely because of the unfairly discounted council tax rate that the chain store retailer pays, and the lunacy of the local councils making their previous free car parks into pay and display. Both of these items can be resolved very quickly by some simple legislation.

Step Four.

Even this large pool of pension fund capital will not support a proper state pension of the size that I am inferring (£200 per week at age 65). However, it will certainly last through to ten or fifteen years, possibly longer if it is planned properly.

During that time, we will need to move quickly to a realistic funding system for state pensions, through the existing national insurance scheme.

It is only because successive Governments of the past 30 years have chosen to ignore the longer term demographic pressures, which have always been obvious, that the current state pension system is bust.

Once again, our politicians of the past have failed us catastrophically, because they focused on their own narrow objectives for re-election, and personal wealth. The result has been that the state pension in the UK is one of the lowest in the developed World. There is no reason why that cannot change.

Going forward from here.

Using these funds in the way that I describe is a “one off” opportunity, and it is imperative that we

a)      get it right

b)      get the best value possible out of it in terms of economic savings, simplification of the civil service at all levels of Government and

c)       plan the longer term benefits of a proper state pension at age 65, for everybody in this country.

 

The Domestic (Macro) Economy - 24/8/2009

 

It was reported at the weekend that the tax revenue to the Treasury has reduced by approx 20% (recent issue – Sunday Times).

Well, there can hardly be any great surprise at this revelation, especially when you talk to the public at large.

As a small example, and of course there are many thousands of people like this, I know a self-employed roofer who for 20 or more years has always been well employed, with a reasonable order book in front of him. I spoke to him the other day and asked him about his business, and he announced that he had just completed a job that morning, and as of that moment he had absolutely nothing on the books to do at all – zippo – not a thing!

Of course there is a reduction in tax revenues. There is a reduction in all economic activity, throughout the Country. Having said that, a 20% reduction in tax revenue is rather alarming, especially when viewed alongside the massive increase in Government expenditure which they are deploying in order to prop up the economy.

However, any such Government stimulus to the economy will only work if it results in employed people spending that money in the high street again. And, quite frankly, this will only happen when the public, or a large section of it, feels confident enough of their own employment, that they can go shopping again.

The Stock Market is strong, and it has been so for two or three months now, and it is always the first to signal a recovery. It usually starts moving upwards 6 months or more before the macro economy starts to recover.

We do seem to be, almost imperceptibly, turning the corner. However, it will still be 6 or even 12 months before any sense of job security returns to most people, and it is likely to be several months after that before their confidence visibly returns, and they go shopping again. Of course, we shall then have to deal with a large unemployed issue, which will take many more years to resolve.

In the meantime we do need to get “spending money” back into the high street, and preferably as soon as possible. We need to get a large section of the public confidently spending money again.

In previous decades, successive Governments of all persuasions have achieved this by re-inflating the housing market. Unfortunately, this time around it will need to be something quite different, if only because it was the over inflated housing market that precipitated our current economic downfall in the first place.

When solving a problem, I love to try and solve a multiple of other, possibly unrelated problems, all at the same time.

A “Living” State Pension

We have a pathetically low State Pension in this Country (unlike the rest of Continental Europe) which is resulting in massive poverty in our older generations, and a national inability to fund State Healthcare for them. I could go on to talk about the de-motivational effect on the Public, and the huge sense of disappointment, anger and the feeling of deceit and treachery felt by our Pensioners. In other parts of this website I discuss the State Pension problem in more detail.

However, it does seem to me, that if we paid a reasonable State Pension …. tomorrow …. straight away …. then most of that money will be spent on consumables in the high street. A better and healthier standard of living for our pensioners will immediately result in them buying  products and services which will immediately benefit our own domestic economy. Indeed, my friend the roofer might even get some work onto his books as the Pensioners spend their increased pensions on their own housing, which in many cases has been neglected for years anyway.

Indeed, as they say, “what goes around comes around” and any such increased spending power in the hands of our Pensioners, is most surely going to benefit all parts of the economy, gradually returning some confidence to employment, and ultimately improving the tax revenues to the Treasury.

 

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City Bankers And Their Bonuses – 24/8/2009

 

I see that our politicians are still casting around for a solution to the apparent problem of financial services city bonuses.

Currently, the biggest problem is one that our politicians have created entirely for themselves by making political comments in the form of half truths in the press and media (don’t they just love to), in their quest to try not to upset the voting populace by revealing the real amounts of a city income.

Finally, they have ventured simplistic solutions to a simplistic analysis of the real problem, in this instance, such as by banning bonuses altogether. Totally unenforceable, totally unrealistic, and should they be daft enough to try it they will completely decimate the city of London and it’s financial institutions.

Our politicians refuse to deal with the real numbers involved in “city pay” for fear that their voting public will not be able to comprehend the need for such high earnings. It is a bit like the issue surrounding MP’s own expenses and salaries, in as much that the reality of what is and what is not a commercial salary rate for the job of being and MP will most certainly have to prevail at some time in the future, and the sooner it happens the better. If we continue to pay £64,000 per year to our MPs we will continue to attract monkeys rather than our accomplished and proven leaders who know how to run a business and make a profit.

Likewise, we need to pay our city people large salaries and bonuses, if we are to continue attracting the best people from around the World. The fact of the matter is that if we want to retain city expertise here in London, because we want London to continue to be the financial capital of the World, and we want to continue receiving the taxation revenue from that source, which incidentally is more than 10% of our total taxation revenue to the Treasury, then we have to pay the going rate for those people … including bonuses.

Banning bonuses will simply have the effect of sending them all abroad, and that in turn will simply serve to substantially reduce the status of London as the premier financial capital of the World, and our taxation revenue to the Treasury will reduce accordingly.

So, where lies the problem? Where was the real problem with city bonuses that apparently caused the near collapse of the banking system?

Sure, there were some people who got paid ridiculously large amounts, in bonuses and salaries, but in relative terms to the financial institution’s turnover, profit, and taxation yield to us all through the Treasury, they were few in number, and the amounts of money involved were relatively insignificant to the institutions involved.

The problem with the city bonus was, and still is, that it creates a conflict of interest between the executive who receives it, and the long term financial health of the institution who employs him.

For instance, when a Bank is involved in take over and merger activity, and it is buying a company, we really do need to make sure that nobody’s bonus is dependent upon that transaction, or the price of the transaction, or the inherent increased turnover that it brings to the group afterwards. In other words, if an executive’s bonus is dependent on increased turnover, we should not be surprised if that executive advocates buying ridiculous companies for ridiculous figures. It is only to increase his bonus.

Likewise, if a Bank executive’s brief is to increase sales of financial products to the public, and his bonus is related to that sales increase rather than to sustainable profit, don’t be surprised if he is then advocating selling every product available to every unsuspecting customer he can lay his hands upon. He will even advocate creating new products to flog to his customer base, even though he himself would never buy them simply because he knows that they are complete and utter rubbish.

It is only in this way that city bonuses have become unrealistic. They were not necessarily unrealistic in the amounts of those bonuses, although I will admit that some have been extraordinary to say the least.

City bonuses have become unrealistic simply because they were not linked to sustainable, repeating, consistent, growing, and permanent profit.

Banning bonuses ….. I don’t think so …. If they do, the baby will definitely go straight out of the window along with the bath water.

 

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MG Rover – Whose Noses Were In Which Troughs? 14/9/2009

 

In May 2000, the five top men at MG Rover were appointed with huge triumph and fanfare by this Government (Stephen Byers and Patricia Hewitt), as being the saviours of the company, for which they paid ten quid (!!?).

At the time, many people in the city argued that the company was “dead in the water”, and even if it did turn out to be possible to save it from the receiver, it probably would not be worth the huge sums of money that would be required to save it in the longer term, even if it subsequently saved five or six thousand jobs. This was primarily because the car, the Rover 75, was “old hat” and the cost of designing and tooling up for a new model would be immense.

You may remember that Stephen Byers was the Government Minister who, entirely by his own efforts, master minded the complete collapse of Rail Track, and lost the life savings of very many railway workers in the process. The railway workers had been actively encouraged to put their life savings into the shares of that company when it was privatised. They subsequently lost the lot. Obviously Stephen Byers was just the man to advise the Government about MG Rover.

Anyway, putting the politicians aside for the moment, the top five at MG Rover certainly paid themselves handsomely during the five years that they masterminded the collapse of the company. Apparently they paid themselves something in the order of £40milliion between them, in salaries, pensions and other benefits, over the five years. That is to say approx £1.6milion per year each – nice work if you can get it!

However, when MG Rover finally collapsed in 2005, the question was, what on earth were the Government doing during the five years that the five ran the company, and what were they going to do about it now that it had collapsed?

Bearing in mind that it was patently obvious to everybody, precisely which five noses had been in which trough during those years, to the point that it was commonly reported in the media of the day, the Government took immediate and drastic action. They ordered an immediate Public Inquiry into the financial affairs of the five and the company itself.

That should do it. Now we will all know the truth, except that we already knew the truth. Never-the-less, at least the Public Inquiry would be fairly rapid and straight forward.

It has taken the Public Inquiry a further four years to come up with the answers that we already knew, and more to the point, it has cost the taxpayer a further £16milion to reach that conclusion.

Let me be clearer – £16,000,000 – The Government has spent £89,000 per week, every working week for the last four years since 2005, investigating the matter. That is to say, they have spent £17,800 per day, every working day for the last four years, coming to the same conclusion that we already knew.

Even allowing for city centre office expenses, and huge city salaries, the Public Inquiry itself would have to have had something like five or six of the top city people working on the MG Rover investigation, all day and every day, continuously every week for four years, in order to achieve a bill of that magnitude.

What on this earth were the appointed investigators doing during all that time, and what on earth were the Government doing during the four years that they racked up the expenses?

Throughout the four year investigation, the Government must have known about these absurd, and ever increasing costs. Why didn’t somebody in the Government stop this chronic waste of public money at some point along the way?

Presumably, they will now suggest that we should have a Public Inquiry about the original Public Inquiry.

We can be quite sure of one thing -There was more than one trough in this story, and a damn sight more than five noses in the troughs.

 

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Spending Cuts – With Some Common Sense Please! – 21/9/2009

 

This week, the three main political parties have at last reached consensus and agreement, in as much that they are now all saying that we will have to go through a number of years of expenditure cuts in order to redress the balance in our economy. In other words, we are spending more on our Public Services than the Treasury is receiving in tax revenue, probably to the tune of some £90Billion per year.

To the public, there is no great revelation in the need for spending cuts, as it has been much talked about in the press and media, and in my experience in talking to the public, everybody has been very well aware of the pressing need for it for twelve months or more.

The issue, obviously, is that everybody wants the spending cuts to effect someone else rather than themselves. A natural enough reaction. However the sizes of money involved are such that it will obviously effect everyone in some way shape or form.

The real problem is going to come if the Government simply cuts expenditure by strangling the supply of money to the headline departments (health, education, defense, public services etc), without providing some proper governance on precisely how those cuts are to be metered out by those departments.

If, as usual, they do not provide any leadership or management on how the cuts are to be effected, then the people in those departments will simply shovel it off onto someone else, retain their own employment levels and sense of self importance, and gradually slide off towards their own enhanced, index linked, final salary pension at age 60, or earlier if we are stupid enough to let them.

In other words, there must be professional management of the reductions in expenditure, unlike when they gave the extra money to the various departments in the first place.

For years, the Government simply threw extra money at them without any effective management whatsoever of how it should be spent. The result has been that a lot of the massive amounts of extra money, which has been committed in the last ten years, has actually been pocketed by the wrong people. As we can all plainly see, the shambles in public services have not improved anything like proportionately to the massively increased spend of the last ten years. In fact, not even near.

So, what do I mean by management of reduced public spending? In essence, I mean

-          managing the current profligate waste of money in public services first,

-          then managing the unnecessarily complex into simplistic and more cost effective systems, and finally,

-          managing redundancies where appropriate, and specifically NOT early retirements, which in themselves usually involve enhanced numbers of years service and a truly massive increase in pension funding requirements.

There are myriad examples in the press every day of what I am talking about, from MP’s ridiculous expenses claims to the Ministry Of Defense’s £35Billion budget overspend, and Scotland Yard’s 2,247 first class flights around the World last year.

Locally, the councils have been saddled with excessive employment requirements through central Government’s lack of management on most issues, such as the massively complex council tax systems, even more complex benefits and care systems, and administering means tested state pension assessments, to name but a few.

Even the education authorities are bursting with paper reports and assessments that nobody reads, and in most instances are a pointless exercise. In our schools, the classic wastage of all, which people really do not understand, is why we have all these funds being poured into schools, and yet they consistently fail to educate our young ones properly, probably largely to do with the fact that after 3.00pm in the afternoon, nobody is there!

Our Universities cannot even manage to arrange the annual influx of the new, and correctly qualified, students without creating several departments and myriad employees to procrastinate and cogitate on the student results which actually do not even exist because the A levels haven’t even been taken by the student yet. All this, just because the Government has lost sight of what really matters, and is buried in a pointless and massively damaging exercise in social engineering, which is bordering on Stalinist.

So, is it possible to cut expenditure on public services without cutting the service itself?

Of course it is – just ask any accomplished businessman from the private sector and they will be happy to oblige with some truth and reality.

Of course, like any business, that may well mean that we have to prioritise certain expenditure items. It may well mean that public services staff will not be able to access their pensions until the same age as the rest of us. It may well mean that simplifying the application of services, such as pensions and the benefits system, will result in considerably smaller departments. It will certainly mean that the hidden and massive expenses of the state Government machine will have to be thoroughly tided up and given a severe dose of morals and ethics.

It is all perfectly fair and perfectly do-able, but it will need our politicians to concentrate on the Country and what it needs, rather than their own personal financial affairs and their selfish desire to feed party political ambition.