In keeping with good government practice the Coalition government will abolish the Regional Development Agencies (RDA) and replace it with the new and improved Regional Growth Fund (RGF). The government has decided to drag out old the old warhorse Lord Heseltine to chair the panel responsible for distributing the RGF funds.
In an interview on his new role he started off by saying he didn't understand all the fuss surrounding the loss of 500,000 jobs in the Public Sector. These are, according to Lord Hes, the same jobs that would be lost through attrition and/or retirement. This might be true. If so however, either announcing cutting them is a farce, or he just happened to forget that the difference is that those 500,000 won't be replaced.
Skirting that issue he jumped into "The private sector will provide" refrain, coupled with the retort that relying on taxpayer's money in order to support the regions is "yesterday's language". Oh really. The RGF will provide a fund-out of either thin air, or more likely taxpayer's money-and then "make the best judgements available" in order to distribute it to the private sector?!
When asked how this supposed reliance on the private sector to drive the economy forward squared with his previous title of "Mr Intervention"-a title he gained for famously saying when in government in the 80's that he would intervene before breakfast, before lunch and after dinner if it meant supporting British industry-he gave the most political of answers-"All my political career, and actually before it, we have seen the transfer of wealth, decision making and power from the provinces to London".
Not quite the answer I was looking for, but then again, it is very difficult to combine intelligent thought with ideological blather. Just ask Mr Osborne-a man who has never worked a day in his life-smirk his way through the nonsense that these cuts were ever anything more than an unsubstantiated gamble predicated on a shallow understanding of Milton Friedman's and dislike of John Maynard Keynes.
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