The Last Ditch by Tom Paine

THE LAST DITCH

Now, about that £81bn…

Published by Tom

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About that £81bn.

I have been rattling on here and elsewhere about how the government is unable to do what is required to public spending because – post Labour – the payroll vote is electorally decisive. Perhaps I am wrong. If the linked post at the Adam Smith Institute is correct, then (h/t Prodicus);

…the government starts by assuming that one half of public spending, departmental expenditure limits, will go up by 10 percent over the next five years, while the other half, annually managed expenditure, will rise by 23 percent. Any deviation from the growth is called a cut.…

This is why the MSM, government and opposition are talking about "cuts", while the rest of us see government expenditure (and public debt) still rising. The word "cuts" here is what we lawyers call "a defined term" – and a very misleading one at that.

Why would a government genuinely trying to make cuts in the face of electoral opposition, define "cuts" so badly as to make them sound worse than they are?

Either they are as keen as expanding the state as their competitors, or they are trying to convince their creditors they have done something much, when they haven't. Or perhaps both?

I am open to other suggestions.

4 responses to “Now, about that £81bn…”

  1. jameshigham Avatar
    jameshigham

    Either they are as keen as expanding the state as their competitors
    Got it in one.

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  2. SadButMadLad Avatar
    SadButMadLad

    Or maybe they haven’t got a clue.

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  3. tomsmith Avatar
    tomsmith

    They probably just take advice from the treasury.
    These “cuts” are extremely disappointing, I don’t see how the current situation helps the conservatives at all. The BBC and Guardian happily attack the so called cuts while conservative supporters who wanted to see genuine cuts are left wondering what happened. Not good.

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  4. Tom Paine Avatar
    Tom Paine

    I am struggling to understand it too. The state is steadily throttling the life out of the private sector and the government is merely pretending to act. There is no obvious answer here to the usual question, “cui bono?” Surely, they are not just holding onto the Ministerial Jags? After all, it’s not as if – like Brown and Blair – that Clegg and Cameron had no other route to the good life.

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Tom is a retired international lawyer. He was a partner in a City of London law firm and spent almost twenty years abroad serving clients from all over the world.

Returning to London on retirement in 2011, he was dismayed to discover how much liberty had been lost in the UK while he was away.

He’s a classical liberal (libertarian, if you must) who, like his illustrious namesake, considers that

“…government even in its best state is but a necessary evil; in its worst state an intolerable one.”

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