The top 'unlikely circumstances of your own births celebrated in music', as chosen in last week's Fun Online Poll are as follows:
I was born...
to be wild - 18%
in a crossfire hurricane - 10%
under a bad sign - 8%
slippy - 7%
to lose - 7%
to make you happy - 6%
to run - 5%
in the USA - 4%
In November 1963, the day that Aldous Huxley died - 4%
under the wrong sign - 2%
in a gasoline alley - 1%
Other, please specify - 28%
Blogging points go to...
Graeme: "in a trunk, in the Princess theatre in Pocatello Idaho"
Chuckles: "on the Bayou"; "to Boogie"
Wigner's Friend: "with a plastic spoon in my mouth"
Jesus Green: "under a wandering star"
Kevin B: "in the wagon of a travelling show"
Bragging rights go to...
DBC Reed, who was born twice within a single song: one time the sun didn't shine; the other time drizzling with rain.
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In these times of "austerity", you'd assume that the government would be looking at the largest items of government spending first to see where it can find savings. For some reason, they think that can make significant savings by freezing working age and child benefit payments and in popular myth, this is the largest item of spending
IMHO, the most sensible way of splitting up government spending is not into things like "health", "defence" and "welfare" and so on, but to look at who gets the cash:
1. Cash given to welfare claimants and OAPs;
2. Cash given to public sector workers and pensioners; and
3. Cash given to nominally private sector businesses, be that procurement of goods and services or subsidies, or some mish-mash of the two like bank bail outs, PFI deals, agricultural subsidies, Housing Benefit etc).
I'm ignoring non-cash subsidies (like bank guarantees, protection of monopoly rights etc) and a nurse's salary is in category 2 (instead of including the value of "free healthcare" as a benefit in category 1) for these purposes.
On which of these three areas does the government spend most actual hard cash?
No further clues. Guess here or use the widget in the side bar.
Once I dipt into the future
12 hours ago
3 comments:
"In these times of "austerity", you'd assume that the government would be looking at the largest items of government spending first to see where it can find savings."
I'd make no such assumption. I'd always assume that the government would be looking at where it could make the cuts with the least possible damage to its core vote and to the interests of powerful interest groups.
B, no, you wouldn't make such a naive assumption, but that's not the popular narrative.
UK newspapers will happily have an article saying that the government is to "slash the bloated welfare budget by £5 billion over the next three years" (or whatever), and on the opposite page, they chat gaily about the £80 billion low interest loans given to the banks to see them through these difficult times.
Complaining about the hypocrisy of the mainstream UK press is a bit like complaining about the Catholicism of the Pope.
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