Sunday 30 January 2011

Indian Bicycle Marketing

From the BBC:

Mr Balls' comments came during an interview on The Andrew Marr Show, as he said Chancellor George Osborne was in denial on the need to switch from the economic policy of "crushing spending".

The major parties have clearly decided to co-ordinate their strategies: the Tories portray themselves as the party which wants to cut government expenditure and Labour portray themselves as the party which wants to increase it. So just for completeness, let us remind ourselves of the severity of those Tory 'cuts', shall we? Here's a handy chart from page 17 of the 2010 Spending Reveiew (click to enlarge):And for the avoidance of doubt here's what the current government says in paragraph 1.15:

Even after these spending cuts, total public spending (Total Managed Expenditure) in 2014-15 will be higher in real terms than in 2008-09. At 41 per cent of GDP, this will be around the same level of public spending as in 2006-07. Spending on public services in 2014-15 will be higher than 2006-07 levels in real terms.

Hat tip Autonomous Mind, EU Referendum and no doubt dozens of others.

4 comments:

Autonomous Mind said...

Many thanks for the link Mark.

Just what will it take for the media to stop speaking of spending cuts, when what is happening is a huge redistribution from department spending to debt servicing?

p.s. You list me in the blogs that don't link to you... I do! :)

Steven_L said...

They're talking about the 'cuts' against the money Mr Darling promised to spend in budget 2009.

He then 'cut' some of that (before he'd even spent it) and Mr Osborne cut some more of it, bringing back to what Mr Darling had promised to spend in budget 2008.

Mark Wadsworth said...

AM, oops, I have updated. I don't think debt servicing is that big an issue for the time being, the point is that at least 40% of government spending is on 'private sector procurement' and the Tories have to keep their chums happy.

SL, that's another way of looking at it.

Anonymous said...

Exactly. It is just kind of fun seeing media and also the HPC forum complaining about 'savage' cuts that will 'thrash' the economy..