Sunday, 2nd November 2008

If you were told that you would have to pay an amount of money to someone, on a regular basis, but did not know on what that money would be spent – would you still do it? It is arguable that probably 99.9% of people would say, most definitely, NO!

Yet we, the people, are ‘informed’ that we must pay an amount of money, annually, to government, by way of taxes (in one form or another); but how many of us know where that money goes? In other words, on what it is spent? Most would suspect that this levy is to pay for local services, the NHS, the armed forces, MPs’ salaries and other necessary services.

Leaving aside the question of MPs’ salaries, expenses, etc – including those married MPs who are each claiming the full parliamentary allowance for their second home (i.e. two expense claims for the same property) - let us consider the bureaucrats, namely civil servants and unelected, unaccountable members of quangos.

Questions have been asked by David Simpson MP (Democratic Unionist Party) about how much government departments spend on hotel accommodation. The government replies are, to say the least, quite staggering.

Starting at the bottom, we have the Welsh Office spending £24,875 and the Scottish Office spending £38,053 during the last year. Let us then leap to Hazel Blear’s Department for Communities and Local Government who spent £482,887. This pales into insignificance when compared to Jacqui Smith’s Home Office who spent – wait for it -£5,790,000!

Now we are talking here Ministers, Civil Servants and Bureaucrats, so it is ‘pound to a penny’ that these costs were not incurred by staying at places like Travel Lodge or a Bed & Breakfast. In the case of the Home Office this would equate to around 118,163 nights or just short of 324 years. No – being Ministers, Civil Servants and Bureaucrats it was more than likely at establishments like the Grosvenor in which case it amounts to around 24,225 nights or just over 66 years.

Regardless of one’s financial standing, whether you are a ‘high-flying’ executive or a humble pensioner, is this what you pay your taxes for? As a ‘high-flying executive, more than likely paying an income tax rate of 40% or even a pensioner who, whilst they have seen the state pension rise since 1997, have suffered one third of that rise being ‘lost’ by the rise in council tax – do those two groups believe that is what their taxes should be spent on?

Yet all we seem to get from ‘government’, in return for their ‘levy’, is being told how we are to act, behave, and live our lives. The National Institute for Health & Clinical Excellence (NICE) has just issued a ‘guidance note’ stating that those over 65 should join walking groups, swimming groups and dance classes. NICE are ‘pushing’ the ‘walking cure’ because more old people feel unhappy now than they did 20 years ago, despite being more wealthy; that the decline in ‘family’ and ‘traditional communities’ is thought to be partially responsible for the rise in unhappiness among elderly people; that increased longevity also means more people are having to cope with chronic illnesses for many years; that ‘numerous studies’ have shown that exercise can improve mental as well as physical wellbeing.

Consider just two of the above ideas : ‘More old people feel unhappy now than they did 20 years ago’ and ‘increased longevity also means more people have to cope with chronic illnesses for many years’. The truth is that governments cannot deliver happiness, people deliver their own happiness. More people having to cope with chronic illnesses for many years may well be due to NICE (yet another unelected and unaccountable body) deciding what drugs people can have and in so doing declining to make available those drugs which might just lower the number of people suffering from chronic illnesses for many years.

This demonstrates that politicians and bureaucrats cannot deliver ‘happiness’, only that we can deliver our own happiness and, even more basic, that they have not realized that money is the raw material that allows us, individually, to make those choices that will make us happy. It follows that government should allow us to keep more of our money, ie tax us less, so we can make ourselves ‘happy’. A prescription is intended to be an instruction given by a doctor, primarily to a pharmacy, allowing people to obtain specific remedies for an illness; it is not intended to be a forum of lifestyle advice or a generalized set of recommendations issued by some ‘faceless’ government body.

‘Politics is the art of stopping people minding their own business’

Paul Valery (1871-1945) French Poet and Essayist.

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