One hell of a debt with which to saddle the next two or three generations

AS the old saying goes, it’s not much if you say it quick but by any yardstick almost half a billion quid – or to be more precise £466,000,000 give or take a couple of bob – is one hell of a debt with which to saddle the next two generations and possibly even a third.

Having seemingly thrown a centuries old tradition of financial caution to the wind – along with any adherence to the ‘neither a lender nor a borrower be’ adage which has underpinned virtually every discussion about money since Noah was a boy – the current crop of inhabitants of the Big House have decided to formalise what many of us believe to have been government policy for ages so, in the immortal words of football pools winner Viv Nicholson, they can spend, spend, spend.

Some of their predecessors, who rivalled the proverbial crab’s backside when it came to spending money – be it their own or that over which they had guardianship – must surely be spinning in their graves after last week’s decision on how our new five Michelin star General Hospital will be funded.

My advice to the very many who share that view is not to hold their breath because by the time the tree huggers and their hangers on have had their say about what’s been described as the ‘sheer bulk’ of the new structure, it’s going to end up costing those future generations a good deal more than almost half a billion quid, that’s for sure.

But whether we like it or not, our elected representatives have (eventually) done what we pay them (handsomely in many cases, when compared to what many of us believe to be their market worth) to do and made decisions on where the new hospital will be and how it will (hopefully) be paid for. Now, for heaven’s sake, please let them get on with it.

JUST over 250 years ago, the phrase ‘no taxation without representation’ became the slogan which led to the American War of Independence. I thought of that the other week when reading of the unfairness of a tax system which decrees that people who’ve spent a lifetime working here but who, for a variety of reasons including family circumstances, health and the exorbitant cost of either renting or buying property, decide to live elsewhere, having their entire income, including pensions, taxed at the full whack of 20 per cent without any of the allowances available to those who stay here and without any access to the very facilities their taxes have paid for and continue so to do.

That, along with the policy of charging the owners of coastal properties tens of thousands of pounds to ‘buy’ land they and presumably their lawyers honestly believed they already own, smacks to me of a greedy, selfish and, quite frankly, nasty government which, as I indicated earlier, seems to have decided to overturn centuries of being a prudent but caring society into something totally different.

It’s a change I don’t like. It is turning what, despite its faults, remains one of the best places in the world in which to live, into something I cannot come to terms with because it’s so alien to everything we’ve all been brought up to believe in. Perhaps it’s what some of the thinkers and drinkers down at the pub call bottom line politics, where everything is measured in spread sheet terms and that, in turn, could be attributed to a shift from the largely paternalistic attitude of those with business backgrounds who used to stand for election, towards the hard-nosed individuals for whom profit, reducing costs and all the socially divisive things which go with that is the only thing which matters. An attitude of mind, perhaps, that was spawned in the greedy 80s and 90s. Whatever its origin, I don’t like it and those who advocate it may well struggle for my vote at next year’s elections.

And finally… This is the last column before Christmas and what looks to be a nice weekend of festive cheer. It goes without saying that I wish those who read this weekly offering, along with those – particularly all those who work on our behalf in and around the Big House – who feature in it, and not always in complimentary terms, all they wish themselves. And I make a plea also to those tempted to leave the comfort of their homes for a few wets at the pub. Don’t ruin Christmas for your families.