Going round in cycles
THE catch is, of course, that I have paid for my prize already. We all of us work for the Chancellor until the end of May, so I am not impressed to be told that at Christmas- time I can have some of my money back. When I buy my case of central heating, a fair (or unfair) share of the proceeds will be recycled back to him. Somewhere along the way, some of the money will have stuck to the machinery. All those busy excisemen and all those benevolent distributors of benefits in Newcastle have to be paid. This is, in its own way, a working model of pub- lic spending in action. Still the Chancellor persists in his assumption that he knows better than we can how two-fifths of our money should be spent. Put like that, the idea seems absurd, but no more absurd than his Christmas time-share offer.
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