Let’s do a DFI
Monday 9th October 2017
We were clustered together in the edit suite – the producer with his head in his hands, the picture editor trying not to catch anyone’s eye, and me, the reporter , feeling pretty useless. Transmission time was ticking closer and the story we were working on had, to put it mildly, gone to crap.
Nothing really stood up and most of the strong story lines had evaporated. We were not a happy trio.
Then the producer said, “Well , what we need is ,what we call in the trade, a DFI”
“Being what? “, said I
“A different effing idea,” said he.
How true, thought I, and easier said than done.
But we did, not least because we were pressured madly by time but also by the ghastly knowledge that the gap in the programme was all our fault.
These days, I’m wondering how the DFI method is playing out at Tory Central..wherever that may be.
Jeremy Corbyn has all the DFIs as we speak . His form of Marxism is just the ticket for the young who have never experienced the inefficient and selfish custodians of nationalised industries, and have never had to face the bills for unlimited public spending – and I’m not talking just about the relatively few who’ll need to, horror upon horrors. repay their university loans, but everyone who’ll will have to put up with the eventual unemployment and the crushingly higher interest rates that a Labour administration’s toy town economics will deliver.
On the other side of the economic model, privatisation and the private sector , has done little better. Sure, unemployment is an historic low, our nation of entrepreneurs flourishes with all the clever inventions of alternative funding and interest rates remain helpfully low – but the fundamentals are still scary.
Long term unemployment, and those who have never had a job `are still a significant underclass. The ‘jobs’ being created count amongst their number a lot of burger flipping – unsecured debt is at a record high at an average £13000 per family in the UK, and the long anticipated interest rate rise in November will force a dangerous tipping point for their finances to flip into a downward spiral. The privatised utilities deliver a ludicrously patchy service. “Customers” are mainly on hold. Bear with me…
So, what’s today’s DFI ?
Well it won’t happen overnight. It is not, as was suggested on a front page over the weekend, for an executive suite of CEOs , like BT’s Mike, Sir Philip Hampton, chairman of GlaxoSmithKline and Virgin Money’s chief exec Jayne-Anne Guardia, to bang on about the virtues of the ‘ free market’ whatever that is, as they trouser, or bag, their ludicrously inflated salaries. To most people they are the blood sucking suits whose financial territory is beyond most people’s atmosphere, and are, more cynically, dreadful pr for the Tories.
Ok..my take on the DFIs:
Forget the students who decide on or slip into the worthless degree courses. Discourage ‘uni’ as it’s casually called. We used to call it ‘university’ because it was an achievement to get there, not a delayed staging point into the real world of work. Call the bluff of the polytechnics by asking them whom they pa
Concentrate on proper research where skills aren’t obsolete and task business and industry through tax cuts to promote a generation which will challenge the rest of the world . Add apprenticeships and funded internships from a very early age.
Make these newbies understand how much the rest of the world wants to eat their lunch.
Hypothecate/divide taxes into productive businesses rather than letting the tax system run riot – allowing , for example, the Gulfies to buy up London.
Property investment is fine, provided that planning law is reformed into something that will allow new houses to be built.
Decrease taxes. Consult the Laffer curve. Look it up.
Share this post: