Man in a Shed: And what news of England ?

Thursday, April 23, 2009

And what news of England ?

The budget has been spun, but the news is sinking in. The Scotsman Alistair Darling, with his Scottish boss sitting next to him was careful to mention in his speech that appropriate increases in spending would be made in Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland for the schemes he announced.

But will the cuts be in the same proportion as the Barnett formula demands?

Apparently the Red Book has a lost of efficiency savings by department ( most of them English departments ), so will corresponding decreases in the budgets to the devolved administrations be made?

I'm guessing they won't be made in full. Watch closely.

By the way happy St George's day - the Dragon of New Labour is on its knees - we now need to finish it off.

1 comment:

Alfie said...: They will be cushioned more than ever, especially in their core stronghold of the Scottish central belt. They have to keep the Scots public sweet, otherwise, the SNP will start to bleat and moan...

Who knows, this may be just the extra elbow in the ribs that is needed to awaken the sleeping English beast, to cast off the yoke and to scream, "ENOUGH!"; 12:50 pm

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The pound in your pocket

"We used to think that you could spend your way out of a recession and increase employment by cutting taxes and boosting government spending. I tell you in all candour that that option no longer exists." James Callaghan

“The trouble with theoretical economists is that they don't understand that when you have a deficit, you can only finance it by borrowing, and you've got to persuade people that it's worth lending money to you and that they'll get their money back... there's no way of escaping it.” Dennis Healey during the 1976 Stirling Crisis.

"Lenin is said to have declared that the best way to destroy the Capitalist System was to debauch the currency. By a continuing process of inflation, governments can confiscate, secretly and unobserved, an important part of the wealth of their citizens ... Lenin was certainly right. There is no subtler, no surer means of over-turning the existing basis of society than to debauch the currency. The process engages all the hidden forces of economic law on the side of destruction, and does it in a manner which not one man in a million is able to diagnose." John Maynard Keynes, 1920.

"To preserve [the people's] independence, we must not let our rulers load us with perpetual debt. We must make our selection between economy and liberty, or profusion and servitude." Thomas Jefferson, President of the United States of America,1801-1809.

Inflation is taxation without legislation .. Milton Friedman