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The Treasury is all at sea

posted 19 Feb 2015, 05:33 by Peter Webb
‘Wolf Hall’ reminds us that William Tyndale suffered a heretic’s fate for translating the bible into English for the common people to read. Today Cardinal Osborne doesn’t know how to describe the nation's financial situation. The deficit in the ‘national accounts’ for 2012-13 was £85bn. In the conventionally prepared but audit qualified and very late Whole Government Accounts it was £179bn. That is a big difference. His Treasury has long been all at sea and he can’t seem to see that. In that sense how unreal and terrifying is politicians’ talk of "austerity” as if a policy choice and for-ever deferred deficit elimination. And they wonder why we don’t want to give any of them a  resounding vote of confidence……..

With the General election approaching and an ever more certain view of the need for government to repair itself: 

  1. 1.     Government continues in the stone age with today’s political parties centre stage. They are secret societies because not themselves accountable  or interested in governance, managerial competence, accountability process and voter engagement and servicing. They take us for fools.
  2. 2.     The senior civil service has grown apart from modern needs and while it is being tackled as such it is not much use  if ‘truth’ spoken to power is enhanced unless  ‘power’ is also enhancing its ability to employ  ‘truth’.
  3. 3.     The State runs without a proper financial system and cannot even decide what the deficit is. 
  4. 4.     There is a pervasive culture of extended decision - execution - feedback - response time which results in re-direction and correction later rather than sooner which will be  costing us undiscovered £billions.
  5. 5.     The government to citizen relationship is medieval.
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