You notice he is now using the phrase which I predicted he would use before the election. “The economy is worse than we thought” Gawd it was so obvious they would play this game. Interesting to see if the Lib Dems will let the Right make even more cuts than they said they would.

Once again we see that the tories have not changed one jot.

A boy from Eton telling fibs?

How very dare you.

We have nearly 900,000 more students now than in 1997 – I regard that as an overwhelmingly good thing and no-one who thinks otherwise has any right to label themselves as a “progressive”.

And what are they studying, and what is their dropout rate?

Sally, me too, I also predicted that Cameron would say that things were worse than they are. The fact is that Cameron said when he was first elected leader of the Tories that he wanted to cut the state, but the public could not stomach that ideology then. He is using the deficit as an excuse to change the country in a way that he never told us before the election and hence in a way that people have not voted for.

Another thing that I predicted before the election has not yet come to pass, but I am sure it will happen in a couple of weeks time. Today we heard Cameron say that he wanted the public to be behind him, but he knows that he has little chance of that. Cameron will make savage cuts to public services and the unions will not take them without a fight. So I predict that the “emergency budget” will have emergency measures other than fiscal: the Tories will attempt to ban public service strikes.

“We have nearly 900,000 more students now than in 1997 – I regard that as an overwhelmingly good thing and no-one who thinks otherwise has any right to label themselves as a “progressive”.”

How many of them actually end up in jobs that require a degree though? Thousands more students unnecessarily in debt is hardly progressive.

Two other commenters have already noted this, and I will too:

> We have nearly 900,000 more students now than in 1997 – I regard that as an overwhelmingly good thing and no-one who thinks otherwise has any right to label themselves as a “progressive”.

This statement appears to be totally unjustifiable. Would the author of the OP care to explain how he/she arrives at such a bizarre conclusion?

Excellent piece Richard. One thing that you don’t mention is demographic change, which has significant impact on both numbers and rates of long term sickness and disability. It’s a while since I’ve looked at the numbers on this, but unless something has changed dramatically in the last couple of years, I think the modest fall that your figures show here is the result of two changes working in opposite directions: falling rates of sickness and disability related inactivity among older workers, pushing numbers and rates down, combined with a big increase in their share of the working age population pushing them up. The result is that the aggregate figures look deceptively stable. Unfortunately. Labour also tended to overlook the effects of this compositional change while in power.

Restricting people’s search for knowledge isn’t progressive Morlock.

‘This statement appears to be totally unjustifiable. Would the author of the OP care to explain how he/she arrives at such a bizarre conclusion?’

Because education, like health or happiness, is not a commodity which is reducable to pounds and pence.

@ 9 “Because education, like health or happiness, is not a commodity which is reducable to pounds and pence.”

Of course it is:

Debit – cost of exapanding higher education over last 15 years
Credit – additional GDP from an upskilled workforce

If you recall the justification for expanding higher eductaion (if not for the arbitrary “50% must be graduates” target) is that in a post-industrial economy it was the only way to maintain growth (which it is, but only with the right number and calibre of graduates) if that hasn’t happened then the money is wasted and highe reducation becomes just another drain ob public finances.

That’s only a meaningful argument if you think people are here to service the economy, not the other way round.

The point of living is develop your full potential. If the economy aids that development it is a useful means to that end, but it is only ever a means to an end, not an end in itself. And there are other means to that end, including education, which might actually be uneconomical.

I am really sick of people talking about the education and training having to be designed for the sole purpose of getting into employment. Some people just want to get the training that will get them a job and that is fine, we should have opportunities for people to do that. But why cant ALL people (not just the middle and upper classes) also have an opportunity to expand their horizons too? What I learnt at university shapes the way I think now, enables me to engage in politics beyond what the mainstream papers tell me, an ability to analyse and criticize the things I see and hear. The more education becomes designed around the needs of employers, the less people will be able to be critical and analyse what they hear. This not only denies individuals the chance to live a fulfilling life but also threatens democracy.

Richard Exell,

That is a very interesting post.

One of the likely consequences of cutting the public sector will be an increase in the number of people who now count as retired. As I am one of the earlier retirees under restructuring proposals I would have thought that that, actually fairly civillised process, will become more ferocious.

But it is certainly the case that reducing the numbers in public employment will likely raise the numbers of early retirees. If they typically retire on around half pay then the numbers required out is double the saving mooted, in the round. Assuming that they are all Civil Servants.

Perhaps someone who is more up to date on this could expand on this point.

Very interesting article let down at the end by the inaccurate statement that it was official policy to try to get people to switch from Unemployment Benefit to disability benefits in the 80s and 90s. It wasn’t even unofficial policy.

Although it pains me to come to the defence of the government at that time – facts are facts and that one simply isn’t true.

Of course Cameron is exaggerating. I wish I could quote the authoritative source I read recently that said the deficit was many millions less than expected – still serious, but better, not worse, than the previous forecast.

I also saw Digby Jones of the CBI on TV the other day giving a very upbeat report on manufacturing which is coming back strongly from recession. Jaguar in particular has just had a very successful quarter and is recruiting more staff.

The cuts will be as deep as the Tories can possibly make them because that’s how they see their role in life, deficit or no deficit.

@15: ” I wish I could quote the authoritative source I read recently that said the deficit was many millions less than expected – still serious, but better, not worse, than the previous forecast.”

See this news report in late May on the downward revision of the government’s borrowing requirement:
http://www.guardian.co.uk/business/2010/may/21/uk-budget-deficit-smaller-expected

If you need cheering up, read this on America’s budget crunch to put Britain’s fiscal problems into better perspective:

“US faces one of biggest budget crunches in world – IMF”
http://blogs.telegraph.co.uk/finance/edmundconway/100005702/us-faces-one-of-biggest-budget-crunches-in-western-world-imf/

News update:

“Drastic public spending cuts totalling more than €80bn ($96bn, £66bn) were unveiled by Angela Merkel, German chancellor, on Monday, combined with up to 15,000 job cuts in the public sector, as part of a sweeping austerity package.

“New taxes will also be imposed on air travel and the nuclear power industry, and some form of financial transactions tax is planned, in addition to a banking levy already agreed by the German government. . . ”
http://www.ft.com/cms/s/0/0f9548c8-7256-11df-9f82-00144feabdc0.html?ftcamp=rss

Hmm..

It also strikes me that Local Government Pension Funds, which were none too healthy the last time I looked, are going to be expected to pick up the costs of this policy. Contrary to what the general public seem to think, Local Government pension funds are generally self financing. The benefits are earned, not given. IIRC the combination of employee and employer contributions to the scheme ran at circa 10% or so of earnings. The employer contrbutions fluctuated on a need based on liquidity. So, sometimes they had to contribute more, sometimes less. In the ‘good’ years they were able to take a ‘pension holiday’ and contributed damn all.

That looks like, yet another, foolish policy in the light of our long term need for restructuring.

My own bete noir is the money payed out by all forms of government to ‘consultancy’ and the pretendy economic models that say that jobs that were once public sector become more economically viable after recategorisationr as private sector. It seems to me that that is just a paper exercise.

I used to have friends that worked for PO Phones – we’ve lost touch now – that said that there was no difference for them in working as civil servants, quangocrats or private sector employees. Most large scale private enterprises have exactly the same employment rules as the public sector.

Whilst I would be the last to deny the ‘dead hand of the state’ on the communications industry, it sometimes looks to me as if economists are shifting deckchairs on the Titanic. Does anyone think that Rail privatisation was a good model to follow? Only perhaps lawyers who have found lots more work…

In other words there are efficient, or at least fit for purpose, public sector jobs. Privatising, or eliminating them, to meet some economic philosophy doesn’t make a lot of sense to me.

The arguement is thus. In Scotland, the Water Industry hasn’t been privatised. It remains in some sort of black box, like Schrödinger’s cat, if you look at it, you have to decide whether it ought to be privatised or whether it should remain public. The fact that it is really neither misallows that easy categorisation.

Glasgow City Council has semi privatised most of it’s direct labour. Does that make a difference in statistical terms, because it is not really obvious that it does in the real world?

@douglas clark
“Contrary to what the general public seem to think, Local Government pension funds are generally self financing. ”

Hahh Hahhhh haaaaa Haaaa Hah

Self financing from where? Tax payers money thats where! A chunk of council tax goes into paying into the council staff pension funds, approx 5% to 25% depending on who you read.Their pensions are pretty good compared to that of the private sector.

“My own bete noir … and the pretendy economic models that say that jobs that were once public sector become more economically viable after recategorisationr as private sector. … Most large scale private enterprises have exactly the same employment rules as the public sector.”

They might have the same employment rules but the costs will be different. Businesses need to pay shareholders from their profits. Quangos can waste money with abandon and nobody really notices.

Looking at figures is very well but people are behind those figures. What I do notice is ever since they introduced multitasking – where one person does the job of 3,4 or even 5 people the number of disabled and economically inactive goes up. Carers, most mentally and physically disabled can do some form of work but that’s very much dependent on the flexiblility of employers and jobs being available they can do. What you notice in so many vacancies is most of them are either managerial or require specific skills or require people to do things they are incapable of doing. Most part-time work goes to people who are actually creating other things. What is the point of wasting 7 years law degree if you end up in TESCO shelving. Shouldn’t that go to a carer or disabled person who are only capable have the time to do those jobs anyway. Isn’t it about using the skills people have got, not expecting everyone has the same skills set and is perfect? Is it now time that actually employers start looking at the way they work, their efficiency and the types of jobs that is created. Taking away the 500,000 vacancies or so from the amount of economically inactive still leaves 7,500,000 economically inactive, Cheers

@4 – The public ARE behind him. He’s walked past us, ignoring us.

@5 – Sadly for your narrative, the percentage of graduates has fallen for a decade, and is now very low for a first-world country. And it’s about to take a steep nose-dive.

Meanwhile, the percentage of jobs requiring a degree continues to climb.

@19 – Contributions. You know, the things you pay into a pension? Oh right, rich 1%er, the concept’s meaningless to you.

And the same quangos whose abolishment is costing the country several hundred million a year, for a saving of millions? Ah yes, THOSE quangos. The functions which got taken away from skilled professionals and handed to career bureaucrats, who have no idea about the issues. That’s Tory “choice”, right there.