I am almost peeing myself with excitement over this report in the Telegraph about George Osborne having demanded an inventory of saleable assets from all departments of the state apparat. My incontinence is held in check only by the fact that the Telegraph's batting record on the Spending Review has been less than stellar.
I hope it's true - and that Osborne has the balls to sell off everything that can be sold off without flooding the market. Even the Labour pukes contemplated about £20 billion from disposals over the next 10 years, resulting in a further £5 billion in annual savings in capital and administrative costs by the end of the period.
That figure could easily be multiplied several times if the political objective of shrinking the state is pursued with any rigour. Throw in the liquidation of state holdings in the banking system, and the debt mountain may not prove such a hard climb after all.
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Has our government EVER know what it owns and why has this never come up before I wonder?
ReplyDeleteI feel really stupid not having really thought about it before now...
It knows, all right; it just doesn't want tax payers to know. The reason for the title is that state lands, like the holdings of the medieval monasteries, do not pay taxes. Nor do the prime lands and properties held by the National Trust, which is the modern equivalent of the monasteries in several respects. May post about that.
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