Classic Murphy

Everybody's favourite retired accountant, and hypocritical tax avoider, is spouting off on the Illiberal Conspiracy about how the state must never cut anything and we should just wait for more money to fall out of the sky. Apparently the worst thing that you can do when you are spending over 10% more than you earn is to cut back on how much you spend: his clients must have loved him, and later their bankrupcy lawyers must have loved him even more.

Apparently because financial institutions are required to hold a certain amount of AAA rated assets, like government debt, then if government does not perpetually increase the amount of debt that it owes then the banking system would collapse. In Murphy-world the only assets that hold a AAA rating are UK gilts, and in Murphy-world gilts are such magical instruments that they will always and forever be rated as AAA no matter how much debt the UK accumulates. The actual ratings agencies might have different ideas about that saying:

“Moody's stable outlook... is largely driven by the government's commitment to stabilise and eventually reverse the deterioration in its financial strength.”

but what do they know? After all they only asign the ratings. No! The government must spend, spend, spend! The small fact that debt interest payments are beginning to take off as the debt compounds up should not worry us, but if the government employees have to make do with same average salaries, pensions, and perks as everybody else then the world will fall apart around us. If the massed ranks of outreach workers and five-a-day co-ordinators cannot bugger off on full pay for six months of the year by claiming 'stress' then civilisation will fall. What would we do without Democratic Services Officers (salary £25,515 to £33,306 pa)? And should one single NHS Specialty Doctor in Homeopathy (salary £36,807 to £68,638) loose their job then everybody in the country will die horribly!