politics, consumerism & the class struggle for a wide screen TV

The squeals from the Labour opposition about possible privatisations and the cuts in spending are laughable.

What isn’t so laughable is the mess they have left the country in.

Every time we get socialists running the country they do this, and I include the socialist government of Muldoon in that category. They can’t help themselves, in order to bribe the electorate with bigger and bigger spending promises they have to loot different parts of Governments savings to pay for the extravagant social policies that are in reality unsustainable.

Since the ‘Fiscal Responsibility Act’ governments have become cleverer at bypassing the restraints and finding new creative ways of hiding their spending and looting. I guess it’s really no surprise that as the Banks, Finance companies and various other dodgy funds that were set up to appeal to peoples greed, that the Labour government should do something very similar with public finances.

As naive investors have discovered with the likes of Hanover, so to have taxpayers discovered that Labour has been playing fast and loose with the public finances… and like dodgy finance companies, should any one really be surprised?

The more pious Michael Cullen was about being a reliable custodian of the public purse, the more suspicious I was that they were up to something.

A more cynical person would think that possibly Labour are relieved to have lost the election because sooner or later the mess with ACC would have to be sorted out, and clearly Labour weren’t expecting the credit crunch which has wiped out any growth prospects and the accompanying loss of revenue.

Naturally voters have very short memories, and like with previous tax and spend governments who leave the mess for some-one else to clean up, the rose tinted spectacles will go on next time they are promised increases in social spending beyond their wildest dreams. So too is there a new crop of silly investors with large sums of cash ready to invest in shonky finance companies promising rates of return that only people blinded by greed would accept…

National can hardly be blamed if they are dusting off privatisation plans, no doubt some will be necessary, and some will be ideological, but if anyone is to blame for this it’s voters who accepted Labour promises without considering how it was all going to be paid for and what would happen if the economy hit the skids. 

It’s been said many times, if some-one promises you something that sounds to good to be true, it usually is, that this applied to both Labour’s term in Government and the mess caused by finance companies, the property market and loose leading from banks.

And, it’s also worth pointing out that those who fail to learn from history and doomed to repeat it, and here we are with yet another Labour government whose really been following the same old tax and spend rules – only this time they spent the money that was meant to go into ACC – so if you voted for Labour, it’s actually your fault if it does get partially privatised, not Nationals.