Islay McLeod
launches an SR competition
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Rear Window
James Shaw Grant on second sight
Does anyone else find celebrity chefs mildly annoying? They appear omnipresent and omniscient on TV, in their own magazines, newspapers, books, on pasta sauce jars in supermarkets. I’ve done Hugh Fearnley-Whittingstall (or Hugh
Firmly-Knowsitall as I call him) and Jamie Oliver (Jamie Allover) to name but two. There are plenty more out there that I might get round to in time.
For biographical reference:
whoswhoinscotland.com
For lively discussion of current politics:
scotlandquovadis.net
For intelligent comment on Scottish literature:
scottishreviewof books.org
Broughty Ferry, dusk
Photograph by Islay McLeod
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Alf Young
Caricature by Bob Smith
If Obsorne moves too fast and cuts too deep in pursuit of fiscal rectitude, we could all be paying a very heavy price for many years to come.
George Osborne was spectacularly wrong in 2006 about the lessons to be drawn from Ireland’s Celtic Tiger renaissance. He was, like most policymakers and would-be policymakers, blind to the risks posed by an economy bubbling away, especially in its attitude to bricks and mortar, on cheap and freely available credit. He was too busy wondering why Google had chosen Ireland for its European headquarters to even think about the consequences of reckless banks in cahoots with insatiably greedy property developers and builders.
But if he took the time to revisit Dublin now before he puts the finishing touches to the austerity programme he plans for the UK, what lessons might he draw from how Ireland has gone about the business of deficit reduction? Is what Ireland has done this time around another ‘shining example of the art of the possible in long-term economic policymaking’? Or is Ireland’s post-crash experience a salutary warning that a policy of aggressive deficit reduction may simply encourage markets to come back again and again, seeking even more blood?
As soon as the Greek deficit crisis broke, George Osborne and David Cameron took to warning, at every glimpse of a microphone, that the UK would be next unless we tackled our debt head on. When the deal was struck with Nick Clegg and the coalition was born, Lib Dems of the Orange Book persuasion joined that chorus of impending doom. The Comprehensive Spending Review, to be unveiled in less than a month’s time, will itemise, billion by billion, the scale of the austerity they prescribe to appease the vigilantes.
In the Danny Alexander school of economics, the cuts are inevitable if we are to reach the promised land of bond market approval and a jobs-rich private sector renaissance. But, as Ireland’s experience has demonstrated, there are no such economic certainties in this grim business. From the latest deliberations of the Bank of England’s monetary policy committee to the latest business forecasts, there is a growing awareness that, if Obsorne moves too fast and cuts too deep in pursuit of fiscal rectitude, we could all be paying a very heavy price for many years to come.
The UK economy is not the Irish economy. It wasn’t Greece either. But the Irish experience is a terrible warning to those who talked this country’s prospects down in pursuit of electoral gain and now claim there is no alternative to the scale of cuts they plan. Taking a bigger axe to the public realm may soothe the markets for now. But if the cuts compromise recovery and compound the problem, those markets will be back, looking for more. As you said George, the Irish have much to teach us, if only we are willing to learn.
Alf Young is an award-winning journalist who writes regularly for the Scottish Review
