By Neil Coupe
Why is everything always somebody else’s fault?
I was reflecting on this when observing the economic meltdown caused by the recent budget (or ‘fiscal event’), which was also interestingly described as a ‘growth plan’.
To a lay person, it seemed odd that the new Government launched a smorgasbord of uncosted and unanalysed measures, with a cut in the 45% highest marginal tax rate for the tiny % of people in that tax bracket, during a cost-of-living crisis where inflation is ravaging more modestly remunerated people’s lives.
As people say nowadays, the optics were not good and, of course, since writing this, the plan has been dropped.
The markets did not like what was going on, and as well as the £ plunging to its lowest level against the dollar in living memory, a third of all mortgage products were being withdrawn and we then heard that only a £65b bail-out stopped pension funds collapsing. I am old enough to remember when a budget was considered catastrophic when VAT was put on pasties, not when the economy was torched and on the verge of collapse.
However, we are in 2022, so it was not of course the fault of the people creating this, it was the fault of ‘lefties’ in the City, who thought that spending lots of money without a clear plan was not a good move. Of the people I know in the City, there are many adjectives that can be used, but none of them spring to mind as the type of people that knit their own muesli.
Or was it ‘lefties’ in the media for reporting the news? This reminds me of when football manager Alan Ball blamed the media for his sacking by Manchester City. As one wag responded- ‘yes, well they kept publishing the results’.
If it was not the fault of lefties it was the International Monetary Fund’s fault for suggesting that the policy was flawed.
Or of course it was the fault of Mr Putin. Or the BBC. Or the Establishment.
When did we become a country of buck-passers, doing anything not to accept responsibility?
A few months ago, I was trying to organise an event with a very colourful and entertaining financier, who seemed keen to be involved, but on the proviso that I would try to obtain a knighthood for him. A very successful man, and one of the richest people in the country, he was extremely unhappy to only have one of the slightly lower honours and was forthright in his disgust with some of the other recently knighted businesspeople.
Firstly, how I was supposed to be able to organise this was not clear. He then went on to mutter that the real problem was that that there was a conspiracy among the ‘Romanians’ who were preventing him from obtaining his honour.
‘Romanians?’ I said, ‘what have they got to do with you not getting a knighthood?’
‘Remainers, not Romanians’ he replied, with admittedly good humour.
When I ran a junior football team, my only red line was that my players were never to argue with the referee, question his or her decisions, consequently putting the responsibility for the outcome of the match onto others, over whom they had no control.
Hopefully, the players have taken some of that philosophy into their working lives.
It is clear that politicians have a difficult job to do and need to make difficult and often unpopular decisions, but they need to take responsibility for their actions and not go round blaming everyone else.
