Word: heath
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SHORTLY after the Tories' upset victory last June, Edward ("Ted") Heath invited a few colleagues in for tea at 10 Downing Street. When someone remarked the new Prime Minister's Steinway had already been installed in the drawing room, Heath sat down at the keyboard and began to play. After he had completed an entire Beethoven sonata, he stood up. "I'm sorry," he said, "but, gentlemen, when I start something, I always finish...
Cutting Welfare. That is almost certainly an unattainable and in some respects undesirable goal. Heath is seeking to reverse or at least to redirect the trend of British life established by the Labor Party and its extensive welfare measures. The beginnings of Heath's quiet revolution were outlined in a budget that Chancellor of the Exchequer Anthony Barber presented to a packed House of Commons last week. The budget's basic aim is to reduce government spending and the scope of government activity while encouraging individual citizens and private enterprise to do more for themselves. The initial step...
...offset the tax reductions. Heath's government is pruning the welfare state in an even more thorough manner than did Winston Churchill when he returned to power in 1951 after six years of Labor rule. The new budget eliminates funds for the nationalization of the ports, halts grants for industry and the building of tourist hotels and will begin phasing out aid for London commuter rail lines. "Our object," explained Barber, "is to widen the area within which industry rather than government will take decisions...
Immediate Problems. Some critics maintain that Heath is moving in the wrong direction altogether. Britain is gripped by its worst wage-price inflation in two decades. In the past ten months, prices have risen 6% and wages 12%. However, productivity has increased less than 2% in the last year, weakening Britain's competitive position in the world market. The new tax cuts may increase inflationary pressures by placing more spending power in private hands and by increasing food prices. The danger for Heath is that he will become bogged down in immediate economic problems before he can execute...
...last week, Sweden's Premier Olof Palme called for some way "to counteract technology's multiplication of the power to destroy." British Prime Minister Edward Heath warned in the same forum: "It may be that in the decade ahead of us, civil war, not war between nations, will be the main danger we will face." During a campaign stop in Columbus, Ohio, Richard Nixon said that the ubiquitous terrorism was "an international disease...