Bread and circuses: why should we be uplifted if £100 million of our cash is spent on a new royal yacht?
Typical Tories: faced with a choice between helping people who need it and spaffing a fortune on a boat for a super-rich toff’s jollies, they will always make the wrong decision.
This is the third time a Tory has tried to foist a new Royal Yacht on us; the twist this time is a proposal to split funding three ways between businesses, the public and the National Lottery (so the public pays twice).
This time the idea is being suggested by Lord Jones of Birmingham, formerly Digby Jones, who ran the Confederation of British Industry for six years between 2000 and 2006. He also served as a minister in Gordon Brown’s Labour government, which tends to ruin any left-wing credentials New Labour might have claimed.
The cost – this time – is £100 million. That’s the same as it was in 2016 and £40 million more than in 2012, when Michael Gove was the one putting it forward.
In 2012, This Site treated the idea as comedy. We were in the grip of the Tories’ pointless austerity drive that caused a huge amount of harm – we may never know how many UK citizens died as a result of the cuts inflicted on them by David Cameron and his cutthroat cronies, because they simply didn’t bother to keep a record of the fatalities.
I wrote: “Would he [Michael Gove] spend his own money on such lavishments? Perhaps he’s trying to tell us that his Department for Education and Science is bucking the national trend by making money hand over fist. This would be strange behaviour for an organisation that is supposed to spend money in the most cost-effective way possible.”
In 2016, I concentrated on other uses for the cash: “We learn that Conservative MPs want to give the Queen another yacht – at a cost of £100 million that could be better-used elsewhere, perhaps on benefit payments for a further £16,666 sick people for a year.
“Ah, but the last Royal Yacht secured trade deals worth billions between 1991 and 1995, they argue.
“Sure – but times have changed hugely since then. With no guarantees, this is the equivalent of burning £50 notes in the faces of the poor.
“Perhaps Conservative MPs should be searched for matches and cigarette lighters before being allowed into the Treasury.”
The point about trade deals is interesting at a time when the Tory government is desperately trying to re-establish the UK as a trading nation after severing ties with the European Union.
But who benefits from such deals?
Rich businesspeople, perhaps – but would they pay their taxes or send the cash to tax havens?
If the latter, then why should the public pay for something that will not help us in the slightest?
And why should we ever be expected to be happy about it?
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the Queen could easily afford to buy her own yacht
and sponsored by business in this economic climate, everyone knows exactly what will happen, it won’t get sponsored then the mv floating tax haven will be about and it will come from public purse
And no doubt they’ve give the contract to build it to a foreign company.
Now, if they were seriously against all this dodgy Russian money, I’m sure the toerags could find a way to confiscate one off an oligarch and give it to ‘brenda’.
That’d be one in the eye for vladimir and his chums, eh?
I want to make you mad by proving the government having it’s own bank and can spend an unlimited amount of money.
First the myth that the government have have taxes before it can spend.
Going back in time to before there was no money. There is of course no banks or money lenders to borrow from so the government can not tax any one as there is no money.
Then money is invented and issued / minted by the king/government and only then can taxes can be paid. So there is no such thing as “tax payers money.
The government makes money by spending it such as done during the Covid crises. Some of this is the bank notes and coins minted by the government but most if it is generated by the government putting into bank account. There is no limit on the amount of money the government can generate so paying for a royal yacht just takes a few of key strokes on a computer.
This is good news for the UK shipyard and workers who builds it. Those workers will pay PAYE and VAT on the food etc. they will buy and this money will go back to the government as taxes.
The only limit on spending is the availability of goods and services it can buy. But of course at the moment the media tells you the government can not afford to pay for the royal yacht but can give billions to big business and it’s friends.
This is the secret that the government and all the rich do not want you to know.
That’s Modern Monetary Theory. Well-known to This Site and its readers.