To quote the Prime Minister yesterday, “with the stroke of a Minister’s pen” his Chancellor has made him a bare-faced liar.
Chancellor Goebbels Osborne: everything up his sleeve
The Slog: David Cameron made great play yesterday of how Britain’s deficit is
falling…..because his Government has been austere, and because the
economy is “turning the corner”. I posted earlier to demonstrate what
complete tosh the latter of those claims is. Now here’s another Slogpost
to deconstruct the complete bollocks that is the former claim.
First up, let’s reiterate one more time for luck the nonsense that
this “austerity” represents. Actual Government expenditure is still rising. In the latest reported quarter for 2013, expenditure increased by 0.9%, the fourth consecutive quarterly increase.
Secondly, let’s not forget that the Draper’s savings are still
dwarfed (by a factor of eight) by the huge amounts of QE money chucked
at an economy which, as we saw earlier, isn’t responding.
Whatever this government has done is but a kid’s piss in the Pacific
compared to what’s happening out there in that real cut-throat world of
markets to which the Conservative Party claims to be ineluctably
committed.
This morning, however, evidence has been released by the ONS
to show that the Coalition has fiddled the deficit figures to give the
Tories something to say at Conference. Like so many things in Cruel
Britannia today, the léger de main clearly visible here is mere accountant’s fantasy.
To quote from the ONS analysis (my emphasis):
‘In 2012/13 general government deficit (or net borrowing) was £82.1
billion, equivalent to 5.2% of gross domestic product – down from 7.6%
of GDP in 2011/12….[However]….These estimates include the impact of two
transactions which affect general government net borrowing in 2012/13.
The asset purchase facility transfers in Q1 2013 lowered borrowing by
£6.4 billion, while the transfer of the Royal Mail to Pension Plan assets in April 2012 reduced borrowing by £28.0 billion. Together the transactions have reduced net borrowing by 2.2% of GDP.’
In short, without this jiggery-pokery, the reduction would be zero.
And pray tell us dear Treasury, exactly how many Britons regard the
Royal Mail as a Pension Plan asset?
Now, in a final bullfighter’s coup de grace, read this deliciously self-incriminating extract from the Prime Minister’s speech of yesterday:
“You can’t conjure up a dynamic economy, a strong society, fantastic schools all with the stroke of a minister’s pen.”
Indeed you can’t, Dave – not even if you’re a Chancellor. But your
Chancellor has tried to do so: and as, under ONS rules, he was an
advance sighter of these data, he knew what the result would be before
you made your speech, chummy. Tell me, Prime Minister: just how much do
you trust Lord Draper of Frogspawn?
If only we could trust Shadow Chancellor Ed
‘Numbers Guru’ Balls to spot this fraud and make hay from it. If only we
could trust the Labour Party to be our Friend in Tough Times. If only
the Labour Party wasn’t led by the love-child of Gerald Ford and Sarah
Palin. If only we had an effective Opposition beyond the blogosphere.
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