Promise Of The Day Four

To paraphrase the one bit of William Shakespeare that we all know; Dick The Butchers cri de coeur from Henry 6, Part 2, Act 4, Scene 2, 71-78, "The first thing we do, let's kill all the accountants."  Our former Prime Minister, David Cameron declares that he did not go into politics to be a high powered accountant dedicated to balancing the books.

No, but he did go into a government system that uses a variety of accounting techniques to help to work out what the hell is going on and why and then try to deal with the consequences and implications.  It is a long word, administration, or if you prefer management.  Politicians are supposed to do it if elected.

But politicians spend other people's money, actual or created.  Even the poorest give them money, via sales taxes and other general taxation.  The issue is that it is popular to give out money and unpopular to take it away.  As the politicians have family, associates and powerful interests to placate they have to juggle the money to benefit these as well as those who want money spent on them.

Thus accountants who do proper and careful accounting are not wanted voyaging on the ship of state.  They have the nasty habit of bringing bad news, failing to stick to the political story line and worst of all explaining that all the options each have an unwanted downside.

Luckily, there are other accountants available ready and willing to manage the figures to suggest all is well and everything is possible.  By miracles of finance not only is everybody to be made happy but the accountants responsible will be rich beyond any politicians wildest dreams and these can be really wild.

So when Cameron implies that we can do without the accountants he does not mean this, he is saying that it can all be left to the ones he hires to present the figures in the form that the politicians like leaving them to gather in the benefits for their kind of people.

Meanwhile our modern Dick the Butcher has learned to hire his own accountant to avoid paying up the money that Cameron needs to be a winning politician.