Werewolves of prudence

Even a man who is pure in heart

and says his prayers by night

may become a wolf when the wolfbane blooms

and the autumn moon is bright.

I’m not a socialist, but…

Usually, I’m a huge fan of the Taxpayers’ Alliance: they are doing the job of public finance sanity and fiscal prudence that used to be at the economic heart of the Tory Party. Whether the Conservatives were truly as penny-wise as they made themselves out to be, they had a reputation for it and whenever Britain was in the financial mire (such as after any Liberal government or Liberal-led mishmash, or any Labour administration or any exhausting war against some European evil or other) the Conservatives and their predecessors were the go-to guys for financial salvation. Then came John Major.

Today, not so much.

But the TPA has been swimming and continues to swim upstream against New Labour’s torrent of public-sector expenditure madness; whether its revenues are raised directly from the citizenry by taxation or indirectly extorted from us via sucking up the real wealth in ‘borrowing’ from the lenders whom it has corrupted and in deliberate inflation. It’s in there nationally and on a daily basis calling the quarters against the State’s zombie armies of spend n’ spend world destroyers. They really are well organised and doing a great job

So it’s disappointing that when it comes to football, some of it staunchest supporters turn out to be Generation Game give away the towels and the set of wine glasses and a portable TV as the rest of us Fallen Ones.

Here’s part of the article in question.

News broke this week that Northern Rock, which is of course owned by taxpayers, has spent £10 million sponsoring Newcastle United. It's absurd that a bank who needed our cash to keep its head above water is now using that money to sponsor sports teams.

Even TPA Campaign Director Mark Wallace - who is a Newcastle fan - criticised the move in this week's press, saying: "A bank that needed to be bailed out by taxpayers should be focusing on repaying that money. Even if they want to spend £10million on advertising, there are much better targeted ways to do that which could reap bigger rewards."

But of the commentators who say they favour the TPA’s approach, two out of three draw the line the wrong side of prudence with footie.

Hmmm, I'm not sure about this, even as a staunch supporter of the TPA. Fundamentally, football is still an area where the citizens of Great Britain continue to waste their dwindling resources. I for one, simply via their association with a resurgent football team, might assume that the fortunes of Northern Rock had changed likewise, and I think that this is probably the subconscious impact they are aiming for, in turn sparking a quite possible upsurge in confidence and investment. Sorry.

And

I am a big big fan of TPA and read their website daily.

However, all businesses need to advertise/promote themselves and although Northern Rock has been bailed out by the Taxpayer, as a business person, I believe that they must advertise/promote themselves to gain new customers and ultimately pays us back. Whether or not the sponsorship deal is good value for money, I don't know.

This is the first time I have had to disagree with TPA. I hope TPA keep up the good work.

Are we all socialists now?

Maybe these commentators have a point, but still and all thinking that Northern Rock is a business in the usual sense is a bit…poetic? The swine who ran it led Britain down Gordon Brown’s primrose path of destruction and now we’re supposed to accept the same cosy local profits for local pols and local ‘businessmen’ at national expense deal less than two years on from mortgage Armageddon. ‘Small’ sums are involved, if you are of the class of people who thing of millions of pounds as small, but even so, TPA fans, don’t they know the power of symbolism?

One of them does:

... I don't want NUFC to be the subject of this sort of back-door pseudo nationalisation. The biggest problem the North East has is our crushing addiction to public spending; its destroyed our formerly great culture of private entrepreneurship and has locked us into long-term relative poverty (see the way relative GVA has "grown" in the region over the last decade). Every penny of additional public investment is therefore bad for US, let alone what it means for taxpayers as a whole.

Every man has his price, and I work in the bloated benefits bureaucracy and so I’m very familiar with hunting with the hounds and running with the fox so these TPA weak sisters don’t exactly surprise me, but any movement or party such as our nation must soon find or perish needs its members to be plentiful and varied in their interests and expertise in order to overcome the many kinds of obstacles that good governance meets – and especially when some aspects of the political life of that nation seem irredeemable even by the brightest and keenest of its specialists.

You need national security campaigners; and those eager to see the upholding (or even the establishment of the Queen’s Peace); and educational reactionaries; and defenders of the national church and religious freedom; and public employment reducers; and those who will go to hell and back to support the family; and people who don’t believe that (however many) million pounds of our money being spent on supporting a football team could be a good thing.

Worse even than his abasement before the European imperial project and the family-hating Left-wing political class is David Cameron’s ceaseless work to make the Tory Party a place that is neither a broad church nor a deep one where many voices and much wisdom will prevail.

Picture from here.