We are incessantly told by the Coalition government that massive cuts must be made to British public spending. They say this will mean large cuts in public servants, reduced legal aid, fewer courts, higher fares on trains and buses as public subsidies are lowered, pensions, both taxpayer funded and private, reduced by moving from the Retail Price Index to the Consumer Price Index for annual inflation uprating, massive hikes in student fees, severe reductions in benefits and a re-shaping of our armed forces in a time of war which not only leaves Britain seriously deficient in the means to defend herself or meet her existing commitments, but has made her a laughing stock by the proposal to have two new aircraft carriers, one of which will never have any British aircraft on it and the other which will have to wait until 2020 before their planes arrive.
But while cuts are being made to almost all of the public services which Britons most need, plenty of money is being found for things which the majority of the population do not wish to fund. Let’s have a look at them:
– £15 billion in higher Treasury per capita payments to Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland
– Foreign Aid £6.3 billion (rising to £9.4 billion by 2013)
(http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-1322361/SPENDING-REVIEW-2010-Foreign-aid-increase-37.html)
– UK Gross gross contribution to EU £14 billion ( rising to £19 billion 2015).
(net contribution £6.4 billion rising to £10.3 billion in 2015)
Much of the EU contribution which is returned to Britain is spent on things Britain would not choose to fund if the decision was made by Westminster. But even if the net EU contribution is taken, these three items alone come to more than £27 billion this year. Take the gross EU contribution and it is £35 billion.
Those figures are solid. There are others which obviously involve large sums but which are difficult to tie down exactly.
– The cost of the war in Afghanistan in 2009/10 is estimated at £4,200m.
(http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-1288062/Cost-Afghan-Iraq-wars-rises-20billion.html)
This does not include the pay of service personnel or the long term costs of providing for the wounded and dependents of those killed, but includes some foreign Aid. The absence of the wages is reasonable in that the armed services would probably be as large even if we were not in Afghanistan. However, those on active service receive enhanced payments which would defray the Aid expenditure. WE could probably save £5 billion a year if we left Afghanistan.
– Spending on politically correct initiatives. In 2006 the Metropolitan Police spent £187 million – six per cent of their budget – on equality and diversity issues.
This type of expenditure will almost certainly be repeated throughout public service both at national and local level, because the last Labour government institutionalised political correctness within public service by placing a legal obligation on all public bodies and private companies and not-for-profit corporations such as charities to demonstrate that they were not discriminating on the grounds of race, gender or sexual inclination. The potential sum to be saved if such an obligation was removed would certainly be billions.
Removing politically correct expenditure would not only save the money spent but improve efficiency by allowing staff to concentrate on their work without the distraction of having to be politically correct. It would also improve morale amongst the large majority of public employees who presently live in fear of being accused of a pc “crime” which would mean a very real risk of losing their jobs.
– Leaving the EU – Apart from saving our contribution, it would also save Britain considerable amounts by allowing her to remove many legal and bureaucratic costs. In their “The Great European Rip-Off” David Craig and Matthew Elliott estimate that our membership costs Britain £118 billion a year between such costs and our contribution to the EU budget. (http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/europe/6198708/EU-costs-Britain-118bn-a-year.html)
Leaving the EU would save other substantial amounts. Having regained control over our own borders we would no longer have to allow any person legally resident in the EU to come to Britain and be treated as a British citizen. This would allow us to end mass migration which would have three major effects. The first would be a freeing up of jobs taken by immigrants for Britons which would reduce our unemployment and benefit rolls. The second would be the removal of the legal requirement to treat EU migrants to Britain as if they were Britons for the purposes of state funded services such as health, education and council housing. That would both reduce public expenditure and reduce pressure on public services. Third, fewer immigrants in Britain would generally reduce competition for goods and services especially housing.
Withdrawing from the EU would also have beneficial effects on our relations with the rest of the world. We should be freed of the European Court of Justice, which in practice implements the European Convention on Human Rights when making judgements. Britain would still be a signatory to the Convention and the European Court of Human Rights could still pass judgements which in theory Britain would be bound to follow, but in practice such judgements could be ignored because, unlike the European Court of Justice, there would be no legal sanction the court could enforce. Moreover, outside of the EU Britain could repudiate the Convention in whole or part. Other benefits would be Britain negotiating all treaties on her own behalf, something particularly important when it comes to trade, rather than leaving this to the EU and the end of much of the foreign Aid from Britain being funnelled through Brussels. Generally, our departure from the EU would lead to a culture change whereby our political elite had to ask through force of circumstances, not what is good for the cause of liberal internationalism but what is best for Britain.
Why is the entire British political elite keeping quiet about such savings? Why do they prefer to impoverish their own people and leave them without the means to defend their country? Because they are all wedded to the liberal internationalist fantasy, the desired end of which is a world bereft of national boundaries and loyalties. Our political elite are Quislings in the service of globalism.
Living In A Madhouse 