No one can deny that 10 O'Clock Live is pretty left-leaning. And that means not everyone will think it's as funny as Bozo does. The slaughtering the give to Ed Milliband is however priceless and likely to get as many laughs from Tories.
It's far from perfect however.
Last week, in discussing the cuts package my man David Mitchell had amassed a 3 person panel to offer views. One was an acitivist. She was passionate, very good at telling us all that was wrong with the package, and pretty crap at offering alternatives. The man from The Times, who couldn't compete in passion and charm because his support for cuts, like Bozo's comes entirely from the position of "It's crap but we have to do it" field.
But I want to discuss the final guest.
Was she a real economist? Surely she was a spoof put there to get a few extra laughs?
Don't ask me to remember her name, but frankly I will never forget her hairdo!
Anyway... among the dodgy sounding arguments she came up with was to compare the US stimulus package with the coalition efforts.
What?
Forget the ridiculous amount being pumped into the economy by the Americans (actually in specific terms I have forgotten...but it was $750 billion or something...) but if we are comparing Britain and the US let us compare Britain with the US ... there is no way this woman can be a real economist.
Firtstly the Americans can print $750 billion and we cannot. Why?
Well of other comparative reasons. The US treasury bond is THE risk benchmark for AAA. It sort of doesnt matter how bad things get, people will always have to buy them for portfolios. No one has to buy gilts. So the American move can make markets jittery, any attempt to force British Government Bonds into a saturated market will cause meltdown.
Second, the woman may not have noticed bu Gordon Brown spent the 10 years prior to the sub-prome disaster building the biggest and most expensive welfare state in the history of welfare states.
Let us compare the ten years of welfare state building in Britain with the US. Let;s compare the NHS with its American equivalent.
Oh Sh*t! They don't have one.
You stupid woman you cannot compare an apple and an orange, let alone an apple and a hand grenade.
I do so hope she was a spoof, because the national Association of Television Econimists needs to expel her if she wasn't.
I am not against the welfare state... any regular reader will know that. But I don't advocate paying for it with fictitious money. I cannot say with borrowed money, because it is always going to be paid with borrowed money - but hopefully sensible borrowed money. Gordon Brown dismantled the welfare state when he gormlessly believed all his scottish banking cronies and decided to keep borrowing their money and thrusting it into the NHS.
I don;t expect the spoof economist to realise that - especially when she seemed to think that the world's bond buyers would happily fund a UK stimulus package.
Sheesh
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