Dave don't got no clue (8)

Our Dave was busily airing his general uselessness on The Andrew Marr Show* again this morning:

You can pick and choose a few vaguely promising bits, e.g.

Look, I believe in cutting people's taxes. It's one of the reasons I'm in politics, is to leave people with more of their own money to spend as they choose.. I have an alternative. I mean I think that's what's interesting about politics now: you've got two parties with a very different vision... we have a different approach, which is to say the government has got to tighten its own belt...

Hurray. but here are some of the bits I edited out of that highly selective quote:

My alternative is that the VAT cut was a big mistake - twelve and a half billion pounds really wasted. This week, the Head of Marks and Spencer's, the Head of Next, the former Trade Minister Digby Jones all saying this was a waste.

D'oh! Retailers are falling like nine pins, I am sure that some of that £12.5 billion will make the difference between survival and administration for some; the ones that would have been profitable anyway are now a tad more profitable (and so pay more in corporation tax); for the ones who were going to fail anyway, it's not really a tax cut at all, because once they are in administration, HMRC are nowadays just an unsecured creditor like everybody else and don't get the full amount of what they were hoping for anyway.

And of course do not overlook that it is the entire services sector that has benefitted from the VAT cut - be that car mechanics, solicitors or cinemas.

... government spending should go up, but it should go up by less than Labour plan, and we'd use that money to help savers. There are 18 million people in this country who get some income from saving... This year, the Government's going to spend £620 billion. Next year, they plan to spend £650 billion - an increase of 30. What we're saying is don't cut the total. Increase it, but not by 30 billion but by 25 billion. I think it's perfectly acceptable to say that's an increase, but we're going to trim the increase and use that 5 billion, 4 billion of it to cut the taxes on savings and the rest of it we'll spend in another way.

Dude, WTF?

His alternative vision is one where the government 'only' spunks £645 billion up the wall and not £650 billion? And use that to buy the votes off savers, who would benefit, by his maths by about £200 each? If you can buy votes for £200 each, you'd only have to cut government spending by about £10 billion to get everybody to vote for you.

* Please note "The Andrew Marr Show" must be credited if any part of this transcript is used.