The centre-left pressure-group Compass has recently published an essay called "Liberalism Alive" by Dr Roz Savage, the Liberal Democrat MP for the South Cotswolds. Here is a brief extract:
For decades we have quietly equated prosperity with rising private consumption. Perhaps we have been measuring the wrong thing.
There are two ways to feel richer. One is to own more. The other is to live in a place where more wonderful things are available to everyone: beautiful parks, libraries open into the evening, reliable and affordable public transport, clean rivers, thriving high streets and public spaces where neighbours can connect with one another. That is the promise of private sufficiency and public luxury.
We do not all need enormous private gardens if every child can walk to a beautiful park. We do not all need several cars if public transport is genuinely reliable. We do not all need to purchase individually what we could enjoy together.
The entire essay is worth reading, though it is rather long (32 pages - an hour well spent perhaps.) You can find it here:
Of course, Dr Savage is saying nothing new. The late great economist J K Galbraith coined the phrase "private affluence and public squalor" in his very popular book "The Affluent Society" way back in 1958 (when I was 21 - oh happy days. I was finally allowed to vote.)
But today's Conservative Party seems to have learned nothing in the succeeding decades. Despite the plain evidence of their 14 years' neglect of the state sector through their mistaken adherence to government "austerity" they still bang on and on at their Conference about tax cuts and a smaller state.
Such a policy might benefit the billionaires but I suspect would not banditti the bulk of their own supporters.
I have experienced the peak of my own private affluence for many years now and I suspect the same is true of most Tory supporters as well.
I cannot think of any additional private acquisition, good or service, which I don't already posses which would improve my quality of life.
I can keep my house warm, clean (with a little help) and comfortable. It is decorated to my taste with the bric a brac I have collected over the years, and the garden is tidy (again with a little help), I eat the food that I like and wash it down with the drinks I like, constrained only by the need to eat healthily, not put on weight,and remain reasonably sober. I take the holidays I want, buy the books I like to read, wear the clothes I like and attend the plays and concerts I enjoy (though it would help to be able to hear them better.)
Any improvements in the quality of my life would come only through better public services.
In this area I admit I am pretty lucky. The local health services respond reasonably promptly and effectively to the modest needs I have encountered so far: ditto the NHS dental service. The council is brilliant at emptying the bins and reminding me when and where to vote.
However, the roads are so pitted with potholes and ill-fitting manholes that I have had to abandon riding my bicycle. Swerving to avoid the uneven patches risks being knocked over by motorists, and bumping over them makes contact between my backside and the saddle uncomfortable beyond the call of duty. So it's walk or take the car.
Taking the car is not only environmentally unfriendly but also very time consuming becasue it is almost impossible to go anywhere at all without being held up by road works or a tail back becasue of the intensity of the traffic.
We are blessed with a reasonably good bus service when it is fully operational but it is subject to frequent "cancellations." It is always necessary to take the bus earlier than the most convenient just in case that one doesn't turn up, which wastes a lot of time.
Although I live in a former industrial area we have plenty of open countryside in which to walk and jog. I jog round our country park (based on a former pit and its slag heap) most mornings. The council is now in charge of it and doubtless does its best, but the paths and amenities become shabbier and shabbier as the years go by.
I obtain much of my news and most entertainment from the BBC, both radio and television, and heartily wish they were able to concentrate on these activities instead of wasting my and their time on advertising their good works in order to drum public support to convince the Government not to cut their funding.
I know these inconveniences don't amount to much and I feel very fortunate. But the fact remains that my quality of life, and that of most "comfortable" Britain, including Tory voters, probably the most comfortable) can only be improved by more public expenditure.
I hope the chancellor can find some way of squaring the circle to enable at least a start on this when he announces the budget at the end of the month.
purchase individually what we could enjoy together.
I cannot think of any additional private acquisition, good or service, which I don't already posess which would improve my quality of life.
ReplyDeleteBully for you — I can certainly think of more I could do with more money. I can’t afford to see all the plays I would like to, especially in the West End. I can’t afford to fly as much as I want to (the glorious days of dirt-cheap, plentiful flights are sadly over).
I had a look at how much of my money is being taken by the government in taxes and I can tell you, getting some of that back would really go sone way to remedying this - plus of course I could give more to my church.
Of course there’s no way Mr Healy will do that, so let’s just hope after the next election he gives way to someone who will.
And of course it's not just about my own quality of life. It's also that I know how to spend my own money better than the government does. For example, the government funds, through the Arts Council, all sorts of rubbish. If the Arts Council were abolished and instead my taxes were cut, I would spend the money that the government was no longer taking form me by going to see the plays I want to see, and so the money would go to them instead.
ReplyDeleteAnd if everybody did this — got to keep their money and spent it on the plays the wanted to see — then the money would go to the plays that people actually want, instead of what some bureaucrat in a quango thinks they ought to want. And wouldn't that be better?
Basically everything boils down to the fact that the 'man in Whitehall' never knows best. I always know what I want better than he does.
And of course there’s same thing applies not just to plays. You write of parks. But what if, instead of a park, more people would have preferred an ice rink, or a bowling alley, or a cinema? Then everybody is missing out because of the mindless functionary at the council who decided to put a park there.
DeleteWhereas if you let people keep more of their own money instead of taking it off them in taxes, they would spend that money supporting whatever it is they actually want and not what the apparatchiks decided for them.