Careless Talk - November 2010

Many of my growing number of email correspondents –we are now running at about 80 per day- complained that Lord Young’s swift departure from his unpaid advisory role in Downing St was a great shame. It certainly was: he was Mrs Thatcher’s favourite minister –always presenting her with solutions rather than problems; he had just completed an excellent report to sort out our ridiculous ‘heath and safety’ culture; and he was getting started on a report into how to cut the red tape that is holding back our small businesses. He is going to leave a big hole. I do think, however, that it was right that he went, and went quickly. At the heart of the government you cannot get away with speaking out of turn and embarrassing the Government. There is too much of a history of people saying daft things that then come back to haunt us. Two that immediately come to mind are ‘if it isn’t hurting, it isn’t working’ and ‘unemployment is a price worth paying’.

As families feel the squeeze with higher taxes and higher prices, but frozen or reduced wages and benefits, and worries about whether there will be a job at all, you just cannot have grandees showing how out of touch they are by telling us that we’ve never had it so good. He had to go.