Bill Carmichael: Great political giveaways

I mean, 1970s-style price controls and state confiscation of private property? Seriously? Well I suppose it worked a treat for Joe Stalin and Robert Mugabe – so long as you don’t mind a few tens of millions starving to death and anyone who complains being shot at dawn.

I particularly enjoyed Miliband’s anguished hand-wringing over the price of energy, which is indeed a national scandal.

Miliband’s solution was typically statist and if he gets his way we’ll soon have 1970s-style power cuts to go along with the 1970s-style price controls. If this back to the future stuff goes on much longer we’ll all be sporting flairs and curly perms and bopping away to T. Rex.

But the real reason our energy prices are among the highest in the Western world can be summed up in two words – green taxes. The Office of National Statistics calculates that 24,000 mainly elderly people die each year because they cannot afford to heat their homes adequately. In fact green taxes kill more people in a single winter’s day than have ever died as a result of global warming. And who was the Labour climate change secretary responsible for this wicked policy? Don’t remind me – it’s on the tip of my tongue. Ah yes! None other than Ed Miliband!

So now we have Miliband complaining bitterly about the disastrous impact of a policy that he himself introduced. Absolutely priceless.

There were also lots of promises of giveaways to keep Labour’s client voters sweet – including reversing many of the coalition Government’s benefit reforms.

To be fair Miliband is not alone in his generosity with other people’s money. Last week Nick Clegg was pledging taxpayers’ cash so the children of rich people can have a “free” school lunch. No doubt the Conservatives next week will also be promising voters lots of goodies too.

This blatant dishonesty is depressing. Wouldn’t it be marvellous if instead we had a politician prepared to give it to us straight? Someone who would explain that there can’t be any giveaways because there is simply no money. Someone candid enough to say that we are a trillion pounds in debt and we are adding to that massively every day. That despite what you hear constantly from the BBC about the “savage cuts”, government spending is increasing, not going down. A politician brave enough to argue that our future prosperity depends on a government that promises to do less, instead of doing more.

Someone who would point out that if we continue to refuse to live within our means, we’ll have to borrow ever larger amounts of money that will have to be paid off by future generations.

A courageous, principled soul who would say plainly and firmly that a society entirely dependent on us stealing from our own grandchildren is morally as well as economically bankrupt. No, sadly, I don’t see that happening either.

Stop the killing

Around the world militant Islamists are mercilessly persecuting Christians.

Last Sunday at least 80 people were killed by a double suicide bombing in a church in Pakistan. Attacks on Christians have taken place in Nigeria, Egypt, Iraq, Syria, Lebanon, the West Bank and the Gaza Strip.

Yet the response from Christian church leaders in the West is curiously muted. Perhaps defending people being murdered for their faith isn’t sufficiently fashionable when compared trendy causes such as gay priests and global warming?

Either way there is one effective thing we can do to help these poor people. We should explain to the governments of these countries that if they fail to protect their vulnerable minorities, then all Western aid will be suspended. It will concentrate their minds wonderfully.