Friday 8 January 2010

And so it begins

There's a massive poster right next to Stepney Green Tube station (so I have to walk past it pretty much every day). It has David Cameron's face and an utterly inane slogan:
We can't go on like this. I'll cut the deficit not the NHS.
Ok. So what public spending will you cut? Or which taxes will you raise? This is just silly. You can either claim that you will reduce the deficit by cutting the NHS, or you'll reduce the deficit despite not cutting the NHS, but to somehow imply that there's a choice between the two is ridiculous.

In order to cut the deficit you have to reduce spending, or increase taxes (of course, why you'd want to cut the deficit in the first place is a different question, but let's pretend that it's a sensible goal). If you're not going to reduce spending in the NHS, that means you have to either reduce spending by more somewhere else, or increase taxes by more. Does anyone actually believe that a slogan like this says anything at all? If so, I'm not sure they should be allowed to vote.

3 comments:

Andy said...

You've probably seen this, but I thought I'd add it here anyway as it seems relevant.

Some people have made their own version of DC's poster - there is an online generator too.

http://www.mydavidcameron.com/

Warm regards,
Andy

John Faben said...

I quite like this one http://www.mydavidcameron.com/images/c3.jpg
You can just imagine it ending with: "and the deficit... but not the NHS".

Al said...

This is my favourite take on the poster

http://www.flickr.com/photos/gitamalhotra/4309273034/