Budget 2011 Special Review

 The box was filled with gobstoppers and other tuck

Yesterday was Bring Your Child To Work Day in the House of Commons, and I must say the kid they let announce the budget was really impressive. Budgets are generally hard to understand – a multidirectional numberfuck endlessly picked over by an army of nerds emerging in TV studios like the Orcs in the Mines of Moria. But fortunately for you, Word-Happener is very clever  - I call myself the thinking man’s Einstein – and I can wrap it up pretty neatly. This budget protects the vulnerable and puts the burden of the recovery onto the shoulders of those who caused this mess. That’s right – you, you bastards.

A key policy, reiterated in the budget, is to lower Labour’s bank levy by £1 billion. And in another bit of good news for Big Money, corporation tax will now be lowered by 2%. This is a big relief for everyone – for example, Vodafone can now pay 2% less of the billions of pounds of taxes they don't pay.  So the rich are getting some much-needed relief – they’ve had a really rough couple of years, ok, and actually everyone’s been pretty rude to them and I know one millionaire who was so sad about it all he paid his butler to cry himself to sleep, so just back off, ok?

But obviously Osborne knows that the rich have to play their part – that’s why he said the government would “encourage” wealthy people to give more. Not tax them more, you understand. But “encourage” them. This is, hopefully, part of a new wave of light-touch government initiatives. In future, I would like the government to “encourage” the Army to go to war, “look favourably upon” the police catching criminals and send good “vibes” to NHS doctors. Aside from hinting very strongly that wealth distribution might be nice, in another bold policy some marginal sections of society (specifically ‘everyone’) will pay more tax on most of what they buy with a VAT rise, and there’ll also be that huge reduction in public services everyone’s quacking on about. In short, this is a highly progressive budget, especially impressive given the Chancellor's age.

This budget has to be tough, because of the mess Labour landed us in. For those who are too young to remember the 2008 financial crisis (the Chancellor, perhaps), here's a guide.

History of the 2008 Financial Crash

In retrospect, it was an audacious manifesto pledge

In 2007, Labour was spending too much. That’s why at the time the Tories had an audacious alternative - they said they would stick to Labour’s spending if elected, indeed raise it. Just before making that pledge, Osborne also said he favoured much less regulation in the nation’s finances – saying we should “look and learn from across the Irish sea” (the fact that Ireland’s finances just suffered a kind of monetary equivalent of the Hindenburg disaster is neither here nor there). 

Then – BAM – for some MAD reason, Gordon Brown caused the US housing bubble to burst. According to sources in my mind, he did it because he found it “funny”. Labour then spends loads of public money - either to make things worse or to stabilise the economy, I forget which. The polls at the time showed the public clearly trusted Brown over Cameron to sort out the crisis – but don’t forget, the public have also attended Justin Bieber’s 3D biopic Justin Bieber: Never Say Never in high numbers, so they’re clearly idiots. Cut forward to the present: banks bailed out with taxpayer money receive billions in bonuses, and everyone else is fine. I assume. Now, I gotta go catch that Justin Bieber: Never Say Never - apparently in 3D he's even dreamier.

UK Film Council axed 'before costs known'

The National Audit Office reported this week that the decision to axe the UK Film Council was “based on insufficient financial information and analysis” and will most likely “lead to higher overall costs or the displacement of costs elsewhere”.

People used to criticise the Tories for knowing the price of everything, but the value of nothing. Well, they can’t do that anymore. The cuts implemented by the Department for Culture, Media and Sport have been criticised by the totally insane-sounding National Audit Office for being uncosted, expensive and incompetent. You know the Department for Culture, Media and Sport – it’s the one run by Jeremy Hunt, who also runs the website iwishrupertmurdochwasmydad.com. He’s shown the country that we cuts-supporters can have it all: we can undermine national institutions and make it cost more.

Winner was unimpressed by The King’s Speech

We all remember where we were when we saw on the news that the UKFC was going to be axed. I was watching the news. The move was violently opposed by a mass online petition and budding actors Clint Eastwood, James McAvoy, Emily Blunt, Pete Postlethwaite, Damian Lewis, Timothy Spall, Daniel Barber and Ian Holm. But the pro-cut side soon got its knight in shining armour. Michael Winner. The guy off of that advert and some directing. Well, he got his way – Michael by name, Michael by nature.

And the fact of the matter is the UKFC doesn’t need all that money. They’re so wasteful. Apparently Colin Firth refused to imitate a stutter in The King’s Speech, so it had to be created through painstaking and expensive CGI. In In The Loop, Peter Capaldi reportedly insisted on having the production team pay for Michael Douglas to stand just out of shot during all of his scenes to “feed off his energy”. Unbelievable.

And sure, for every £1 the UKFC invests in films it generates £5 at the box office. But it could be making so much more. For example, they could easily merge Helena Bonham Carter with Leavesden Studios. They can use her for prestige films plus rent out her hair as a fully-operational studio backlot. BAM – you’ve doubled your revenue. And if Richard Curtis tries to make another film like Love, Actually, why not halve him?

The thing that really pisses on my goat is the idea that the UK film industry is worth investing in at all. It creates £4.5 billion per year for the UK economy, up 50% since 2000, when the UKFC was created. But that’s only two billion more than the banks will pay in this year’s bank levy – and they created that money just by fucking up massively. If the UK Film Council had half an enterprising brain it would contribute to a worldwide recession – then the government could go easy on it and the money would come rolling in.

Cameron to act as a 'critic of the government'

Spin emanating from a ‘close ally’ of David Cameron last week suggested in future the Prime Minister will “act as a critic of the Government, a tribune of the people against the Government when it falls short”, according to the Guardian and the Telegraph.

Cameron in a recent cabinet meeting

Cameron has gone rogue. This is the story of an underdog fighting against all the odds. An expensively educated, nuclear warhead controlling underdog. With a personal security detail. Pitted against the people he appointed ten months ago and has the power to sack at any point. He’s basically Jack Bauer.

The news that in future Cameron will try to distance himself from his own government, and intervene when it ‘falls short’ (or ‘does something that, it turns out, is very unpopular’) warms my heart. It takes a special kind of hero to appoint a cabinet of people, watch as every policy is passed through No 10, and then (when it turns out the public don’t like it) stand up and say “No. Not today. Not like this.” But how can just one Prime Minister hope to make a difference in a mad world like this?

Because this hero has got a whole host of establishment incompetency to fight against. Sitting around the cabinet table one day, as the conversation of his cabinet colleagues roamed from the U turn over the forest sell-off to the U turn over ‘the fuel tax stabiliser’ to the U turn over sport spending in school to the U turn over free school milk for under-fives to the U turn over Bookstart funding, Cameron must have thought: “what idiot appointed these people?”

Fraser Nelson compared Cameron’s strategy of waiting to see whether or not a policy ‘works/causes a huge outcry’ and then intervening to stop it with a chef coming out into the restaurant and tasting people’s food to see if it’s cooked properly. Nelson makes the point that this should ideally happen in the kitchen. I take huge issue with that – when I’m hosting, I genuinely can’t tell if a chicken is totally raw or cooked to perfection until I see my first guest making a dash for the toilet muttering “oh god oh god please no”.

Similarly, how can we expect Cameron to appoint competent people, oversee the policies of the government and exercise basic collective responsibility? He’s the Prime Minister, not God. He’s a true underdog because his only previous job experience is as a PR man – and now we expect him to lead the country. Shame on us. But I have faith in this knight of old. It takes a special kind of bravery to distance yourself from your colleagues when something goes wrong in order to snipe at them. Sure, it means he can maintain his personal poll rating whilst the coalition slips in the polls. But that's just the price you pay for doing the right thing. 

Government approves BSkyB deal

The Culture Secretary Jeremy Hunt has given his approval for News Corporation to own all shares in BSkyB, despite Ofcom saying the decision should be made by the competition commission, in a move which the BBC business editor says will “generate revenues that would dwarf all rivals, even the BBC”.

Example of a bad empire

I actually quite like empires. Sure, sometimes they become bureaucratic – the Death Star out of Star Wars, which was essentially just one big laser canon, seemed to have a lot of redundant office space for what it was. And yeah, they might tend towards evil sometimes – like, say, the Evil Empire out of Star Wars. But if Star Wars has taught me anything (and everything I know about empires I learned from Star Wars, so clearly it did), it’s that empires always prevail (nb I have only seen up to The Empire Strikes Back, NO spoilers please). That’s why I’m over the moon about the Tory Culture Secretary making News Corporation an even more colossal media empire than it already was (it owns a third of the British newspaper market).

It’s unlikely News Corp will be surprised by the decision – presumably they've been hacking Jeremy Hunt’s phone for ages. But also because, as his website puts it, Hunt believes Murdoch “has probably done more to create variety and choice in British TV than any other single person”, and that we “wouldn’t be saying that British TV is the envy of the world if it hadn’t been for him”. That’s right. A quick look at what’s on Sky tonight will show why British TV is the envy of the world – The Simpsons, America’s Next Top Model and old episodes of Hawaii Five-0. All independent, grassroots British projects that Murdoch gave life to, like a big, friendly right-wing hen.

And the non-Murdoch rebels are forgetting the huge concessions News Corp has made: namely, to spin off Sky News into an independent company. The term ‘spin off’ suggests the relationship between News Corp and Sky News will be minimal, like that between Cheers and Frasier – although, since News Corp will still retain exactly the same percentage of shares in Sky News, it’ll be more like if Frasier was set in Boston. In a bar. With the all the same characters as Cheers. And called Cheers.

Now this deal is settled, we can look forward to this media Reich lasting a thousand years – and if there’s talk of ‘pro-Tory bias’ in News Corp influencing this decision, I say GROW UP and remember the front cover of News Corp-owned The Sun on election day 2010.

Either they were comparing Cameron to an inspiring, left wing, and internationally renowned US politician or to the abstract concept of hope itself.  I’d agree with either, but I’d stress The Sun didn’t pick that cover because of any bias in News Corp. They literally just typed ‘hope’ into Google and David Cameron’s face came up, and they were so startled by this little-known meaning of the word they made it front page news.

The LAST thing anyone wants is a plurality of opinion and voices in the media. After all, when I said I heard lots of voices in my head, they called me MAD. This government has made the same decision I made – pick one of those voices and follow it. Let’s just hope things turn out better for them than they did for me, that fateful winter morning…  

Tory council makes homelessness basically illegal

Tory-run Westminster City Council, the richest council in the UK, is proposing a byelaw to make it illegal to “lie down or sleep on any public place” and is to ban charities giving homeless people free food.

I’m a strong believer in giving to charity – in that I’m 99% certain other people do it. But I think I have a right to not have to look at homeless people. Independent research carried out in my mind suggests that looking at a homeless person actually lowers the value of your house by 0.2%. That’s why it’s such great news that the Tory Westminster Council are planning to effectively make homelessness (and free food handouts) illegal in a large area around Westminster Cathedral, a known hotspot for rough sleepers, charitable work and, most likely, homeless Al Qaeda terrorists using free soup handouts to build one of those dreaded Minestrone Bombs.

What others call “idiotic” I prefer to think of as “clear-minded”. This is one of the more clear-minded Tory initiatives I’ve come across. It’s a simple answer to a complex problem: first, you reduce government funding for homeless charities by 30%, then you make being homeless illegal. Eventually, homeless people will realise their non-legal status and disappear in a puff of logic.

Of course, not everyone’s happy about it. A spokesperson for the extremist militant group 'the Salvation Army’ said "rather than intimidating rough sleepers to retreat into back alleyways, to hide away in refuse containers, or to squat in derelict buildings, the answer is to give them somewhere to stay." Firstly, last time I checked, I think prison counts as a ‘place to stay’. Secondly – they don’t have to ‘squat in derelict buildings’ – they could just as easily lie down or perch, removing a significant strain to their thighs. Thirdly, of course the Salvation Army don’t like this law – they have a vested interest in helping homeless people.

I actually think this byelaw is a great starting point for solving lots of complex problems. For example, surely if the budget deficit was made illegal, it couldn’t exist? Unless…unless the deficit became an outlaw, and escaped into the countryside on horseback, creeping into people’s homes at night to increase their levels of debt…it might make me poor – Jesus Shit! I might lose my golden slippers, my vials of swan blood – my tea towels made of Shakespeare folios. I might lose my house! That would be horrible!