Afternoon:
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There's precious little succour available to Labour MPs in these dark times; but some of them, oddly, are drawing comfort from the dreadful fiscal state the country will be in by the time of the next election.
They assume that the Tories will win, but that the size of the deficit will make victory a poisoned chalice because the new government will have to inflict spending cuts so massive that the electorate will sling them out at the first possible opportunity.
Labour will then return to power for another glor-ious few decades.
The Tories are worried, too. They know they will be taking over the biggest deficit this country has ever seen.
They fear that years of Labour government have persuaded the electorate that it is right that the public sector should eat up nearly half of the country's output.
They suspect that the moment they start to try to impose some fiscal discipline on public services they will regain the aura of nastiness they have spent so long shaking off.
And out they will go again, deprived once more of what a Tory frontbencher recently described to me as the "heroin" of being in office.
Yet it does not have to be this way. If the Tories play it right, the opposite could happen - or so a recent episode of Canadian political history suggests.
Canadian politics are normally far too dull for anyone to pay attention to. But something interesting happened in 1993, when the Liberals came to power.
The finance minister, a former oilfield worker-turned-successful businessman, Paul Martin, looked at the books and was horrified by what he saw. The Canadian government had been overspending for decades.
Its deficit was around 10 per cent of GDP - a little less than Britain's is currently running at but shockingly high at the time. He persuaded the Liberal prime minister, Jean Chrétien, that spending had to be slashed, and set about it.
Two particular areas that Mr Martin cut might be of interest to George Osborne. He drastically reduced government spending on public sector pensions.
Given the massive and growing disparity between public and private sector pensions, Mr Osborne should find plenty of scope there. And he sliced away at health service spending.
Never mind David Cameron's rash promise not to cut the NHS: the main consequence of the flood of money that Gordon Brown threw at the NHS was a massive increase in doctors' salaries. Those contracts need to be renegotiated.
Mr Martin's example offers useful lessons not just in what to cut but also in how to do it. He did not try to slide through reductions in spending or services without voters noticing.
He told the electorate unapologetically that Canada needed to change the way it worked. The public sector had to shrink so that the private sector could grow.
The result? Public spending fell by two per cent in three years. The deficit dropped from 10 per cent of GDP to five per cent over the period. The Liberals were re-elected in 1996.
Mr Chrétien was dropped in favour of Mr Martin, who became prime minister on the strength of his success at restoring the public finances.
Mr Osborne has no doubt noticed that twist in the plot; but it may be some comfort to Mr Cameron to know that Mr Martin was, though a brilliant finance minister, a lousy prime minister.
Why Madge makes me mad
Over time, I have come to dislike Madonna. It's not so much her music, which I find slightly less irritating than most pop.
Nor is it the stripper's outfits, which are clearly an ironic post-feminist comment on the portrayal of women in the mass media.
It's the fact that whenever we see a picture of her, my daughters say, “Isn't she amazing, Mum? She's so pretty, and she's the same age as you.”
Jailing the young won't stop crime
With knife crime apparently plaguing the city, some are saying that anyone found carrying a knife should be given a custodial sentence.
Jail is a temptingly easy solution to each new crime epidemic but we need to be sparing in how we deploy it.
Seven out of 10 young offenders re-offend within two years. Maybe it's because they're bad people.
Maybe it's also because once you've deviated from the straight and narrow, getting back on it is tough. This is the subject of an online
drama launched this week — www.outofthegate.co.uk — created and written by a group of young Londoners (some of them
ex-offenders).
Described by one critic as “The Wire meets The Beano”, it's about the chaos and lack of support people coming out of jail face.
Maybe we should think a bit more imaginatively before throwing young people in jail, and at least make sure that when they come out, if they want to change, we can help them to do so.
Make black cabs compete
Outrageous but not unusual behaviour by black-cab drivers: they are threatening to blockade Heathrow airport because BAA has the temerity to allow two minicab firms to ply their trade there.
It's rather as though this newspaper was the only one allowed to be sold in London and the company sent pickets to newsagents that dared stock any other.
When The Knowledge was useful there was a point to black cabs but satnav has made it, and them, redundant.
The only reason they are allowed to keep their monopoly on the streets is that Ken Livingstone bottled out of confronting them. I hope for a stouter line from Boris.
Reader views (5)
I am married to a london cabbie and am the daughter of another. Sat Nav has it's place in a London taxi but only as an aid for out of town jobs, or in locating a definite address i.e. 56 Harley Street. The amount of road closures in the West End and City due to road works means a Sat Nav is next to useless, but maybe Ms Duncan hasn't actually noticed the chaos being caused in London by Thames Water over the last 3 years. A London cabbie will see a diversion sign or road closed sign and will straight away know an alternative - it's called the Knowledge. A private hire driver will not have a clue, like the one who was taking Raymond Blanc from Regent Street to Claridges and Mr Blanc had to get out of the car, and ask my husband the best way. Does Ms D really think this is an efficient way of getting people around the greatest city in the world?? My husband has taken several lone woman home safely even when they have been so drunk he has not be able to wake them, he has spent time finding a police station so they could wake them up. Statistically London taxis are one of the safest forms of transport and considering it cost us 5 years and several thousands of pounds for my husband to get his green badge, make no mistake Ms Duncan we will do everything we can to protect what is an honourable trade.
- Amanda Mills, derby England
Please stick to your day job, we, Taxi Drivers, don't tell you how to write. This comment that sat nav has made the knowledge redundant is one of the most naive I have ever read, coming from someone who obviously knows nothing about the trade. You grab some Jo Bloggs off the street and put them in a cab with sat nav and see how they cope; you can imagine the outcome. I have been a cab driver for nearly 5 years and have only used my sat nav 3 or 4 times to get me to roads/towns outside of London. Why is this? because it is too slow to be typing an address in when you should have been on your way 5 minutes ago. Here are the issues -
-the sat nav breaks
-the power cord breaks
-sat nav is stolen
-loss of signal
-it takes you the long way/or the wrong way
-difficult names to spell/get right, such as a passenger asking for Jermyn street, but the driver types in German street and the sat nav can't find it(there are many other examples)
-the road ahead is closed and you are presented with more than one option, if you turn left instead of right, that could be the road that takes you back on yourself by 3 miles. Or there could be many turns that turn into more turns, and your sat nav can't react fast enough.
-3am, your passenger asks 'on the way there can I use a cash machine, buy some booze, and Mcdonald's drive through' - try that on sat nav.
Sat nav is a useful tool, and I think drivers should have it as an aid. I also have internet on my phone, as another aid.
- Justin Sneddon, Bexleyheath, UK
Londons taxi drivers do not have a monopoly. Anyone can do the knowledge who can pass a CRO check. Our you could get in a car with a stranger who has had no such check, say from eastern Europe. I have always told my daughter never to talk to strangers let alone get in there car.
- Thomas The Taxi, London
So sat nav is better than a black cabbie eh. I challenge you to get a route from east to west london or nothy to south , you choose, and then you go with your Sat Nav and I'll put my money on a black cab ANY DAY OF THE WEEK.
Yes there is a certain monopoly by black cabs in London but the training we do, insisted on by the so called bottler Ken Livingstone, and others I think we have earnt that right.
You go to New York and try and change their taxi system. ANY MAJOR city in the world has their own unigue Taxi system so why not London so quit all this garbage talk of Monopoly and at least the facts of the story before coming up with you little cameo.
So you up for the SAT NAV challenge. Let's see eh!!!
- Martin Adkins, London
With respect, Paul Martin did not become Finance Minister in the Federal Government then look shock horror and suddenly realise that Canada had been overspending for decades. Everyone in government and opposition knew the situation. What you are really saying is that the Liberal Government undertook a drastic course of action without telling the people through a General Election first. And sadly the reason could well have been that they would never have been elected in the first place had they told the people. It may well be that Cameron might be taking more lessons from our most senior Commonwealth partner than you realise...
- Damian Hockney, london, uk
