I recently received a worrying, though charming, letter from the London Chamber of Commerce and Industry. I am sure I will be receiving many more like this over the coming months.
The letter details how the Conservative/ Liberal- Democrat Government is cutting funding for the London Young Chamber in 2011. The scheme promotes entrepreneurship, and the London Chamber has particularly focused on schools in London’s disadvantaged areas with poor GCSE results. Admirable work I am happy to support as requested.
I fail to understand the logic here. We need to tackle youth unemployment and to promote people who will grow the businesses of tomorrow. Labour had a record of promoting entrepreneurship among young people which the Coalition now appears to be cutting.
Firms like BT, Marks & Spencer and Kier London together with others have volunteered over 22,650 business hours, a huge commitment which reflects well on those involved. The chance of a double dip recession increases with this sort of investment being cut.
I struggle to see that “Big Society” is going to step in and take this scheme over. Instead we’ll return to the days when family and influence got you a job. Coming from multi-millionaire households Clegg and Cameron have little idea of the real world. They both had massive family wealth backing them.
And to those who will say we need to tackle the deficit, I agree. But the money cut here could be raised by taxing bankers now, not deferring it until 2011.
Supporting tomorrow’s entrepreneurs or taxing bankers?
The coalition’s answer is one based on an ideology that seeks a small state, and increasing the importance of family background on an individual’s life chances.
Taxing bankers, or rather taxing bankers even more, is not going to make a very substantial difference to the economic problems discussed in this article. Neither will the sums of money politicians acquired for themselves under the guise of expenses.
My own suggestion is not likely ever to be heeded or to make a substantial difference to our economic future but I will make it all the same – the President of Europe should take a big pay cut. He earns more than the US President and he hasn’t been the towering, dynamic figure we were told to expect.
The ‘honeymoon’ period might be over for President Obama but for President van Rompuy there was no chatting-up, no flirting, no first date and no honeymoon. We just got the forced marriage.
If we had been given the opportunity of choosing him by a vote it is unlikely that we would have walked down the aisle with this ‘high-maintenance’ partner.