Decline and Fall

How is anyone surprised that Broon's financial clusterf*ck could do anything but undermine pensions and reduce them a level of worthlessness that reflects a country with no money whatever, and a nigh on trillion pound deficit?

It seems to be an inevitability that all empires/societies get to a point where the vested interests of the civil service class close ranks to obscure and resist any effort to change, innovate and move things forward. Under Labour teaching has been politicised along with the rest of the "client civil state" - ie that vast part of the workforce that does not create wealth, but has been allowed - encouraged even - to feel endlessly entitled to dissipate it - and is part of a much bigger problem than just their unaffordable pensions.

What is now germane for any of us are the actual results of our efforts - the means to the end counts for very little with brutal competitors like the Chinese; there is no more opportunity to hide from the competitive world in any aspect of life - especially now we are just mere tax fodder the EU. For a while longer...

The UK educational system is not currently able to turn out a "proper workforce"; just a handful of high fliers who become bankers, but mostly a bunch of rudderless kids who had no idea what they wanted to do/be when they picked their GCSEs, but got steered by the received wisdom that any degree is better than getting out into the real world. And the more compliant are hustled directly into teaching, activism and politics without any experience of a "real job", just to help perpetuate the system.

Of course all parties will tend to politicise education, but Labour politicised it to a whole new level with the help of its (now almost dead) "house journal" to manage the communications and "marketplace".  OK, there are some nuggets in a pan of mostly sludge; but the world rankings make depressing reading. Government today has a horrible job of sorting out such a monumental mess with no money, and now even an unexpected population surge to deal with. Albeit the kids of immigrant families seem to be generally harder working than the indigenous entitlement culture products.

And throughout "public service" the proportion of the budget of time and cash spent on the consequences of Labour's substitution of common sense by PC and process is vast, although coincidentally there was news today about a return to some common sense on H&S in schools.

We love the way that some wholly inexperienced kids find work in publicly funded and contrived roles that were formed in a golden age when they were once the hobbies of self-funded Victorian adventurers, experimenters and mature students with time on their hands (for various mostly legal reasons, like pillaging Johnny foreigner) - because what else can you do with a 23 year old PhD geography student, other than have them present "theme park Britain" on TV shows like Coast?

Most countries in this state of decline resorted to a decent war or revolution to restart the recuperative process. We will certainly not escape the unaffordable spiral of "public servant entitlement" and decaying infrastructure without blood on the walls, somewhere.