The Last Ditch by Tom Paine

Government jobs | Guardian Jobs "page 1".

Almost every company I know in the economically-productive sector of the economy has a hiring and/or salaries freeze (usually imposed after making redundancies and/or renegotiating salaries and benefits). Not so the public sector. At a time when the state payroll should be slashed to avoid leaving our grandchildren our debts, The Guardian
has more than 500 public jobs on offer at salaries of up to
£150,000.

Even the slightest intellect now realises that the debt rave is over. Yet still the political parties squabble and lie about the size of the inevitable economies. The more custard-brained Labour bloggers can be found gleefully exclaiming "Tory cuts", as if spending could go on unchecked even were the country mad enough to re-elect Labour. The leadership of the Labour Party is less naive. It knows it cannot win and is in scorched earth mode; making the inevitable clean up as unpleasant as it can be for the next government. To hell with the national interest, they are preparing the ground to win the election after next.

This is why the Conservative Party has become known as "the nasty party." It is the Winston Wolf of British politics; brought in by the voters to clean up the blood and guts after each Labour "hit" on the economy. It gets little chance to build its "nice" credentials, because once the mess is cleaned up, Britain's indoctrinated voters tend to recall Labour for another doomed attempt at repealing the law of supply and demand. For all Cameron's attempts at cuddliness, this will be his fate t00. The best he can hope for is to get the clean-up done quickly enough to have time to demonstrate his "caring" side before an election. Given the state of the country's finances, that's a faint hope. Especially as it's hard to imagine him acting with sufficient resolution to do the job quickly. He's a PR guy at heart. Relations with the public will be appalling during such dirty, necessary work.

Meanwhile, it seems the cowardly pols are waiting for the nation's creditors to send in the bailiffs so they can blame them for the cuts. Decent, honourable leaders would be acting by now to bring the public finances under control. Their balancing of popularity against duty is likely to cost the nation its AAA debt rating, which will make servicing our massive debts even more expensive (and public spending cuts even more intense).

David Cameron has already pledged to offer government jobs via a direct website, cutting The Guardian's life support. Without taxpayers' money for job ads, the paper could not survive. The staff rooms and SCRs of Britain would need to turn to The Morning Star for their daily dose of economic magical realism.  Yet The Guardian has made a cardinal error. It opened fire on Gordon Brown, failed to kill him and left him angrily wounded. Maybe it's time for the Prime Minister to steal another Conservative policy?

h/t Old Holborn (Never Ever SFW)