GBP 15 billion efficieny savings - yeah right

The spin is on again.

Today's incredible news to be swallowed is the pre-budget leak ( ™ Gordon Brown ) - as opposed to the pre-budget report to grab more headlines - that government is going to magic £15 billion savings from, wait for it, efficiency savings. However its over 5 years (Trick copyright Gordon Brown in budgets 97,98,99,00,01,02,03,04,05,06,07), and of course any decisions are post election. ( Could they have been reading the polling that says the tax paying public, who still have jobs, want to see government make savings ? ) So is this £3billion a year really ? If so its a drop in the government ocean.

Despite even its small nature no one - and I mean no one - believes this, unless its accompanied by examples of cuts and redundancies. ( Remember Lord Digby Jones thinks you could drop the civil service by 50% and it would get better - so there's scope ).

But Labour won't do this, just as Brown and Johnson sacrificed our futures by not reforming civil service pensions before the last general election.

There can be only two reasons for this bit of spin:

1) So that eventual cuts don't seem to bad and are through the media cycle to allow cynical Labour to dictate the headlines it wants for the papers.
2) If no major savings are at least announced it will be impossible for the extra borrowing that Brown Darling announces to be financed. Indeed its announcement could cause a run on the pound and government bankruptcy.

Labour have destroyed our today and now they want to make sure they get your children too.

PS Beeboids - if you want to do your job, the headline should be £3billion per year - but you allow yourselves to be manipulated again. That's bias.

Budget reaction to speeches

In short Darling tried to base his speech on a review of decades of history, revising the time period he mentioned depending on the point he tried to make. He still doesn't seem to understand that not all spending on the public services is investment.

David Cameron made the point that the general public knows things aren't as good as Darling tries to make out. He had a few good put downs ready for the middle classes bogey man Ed Balls. He was also able to counter the selective quotes of the UK's performance and show the truely shocking nature of the UK's debt and balance of payments.

Nick Clegg had a OK joke on ventriloquist dummies - however you can't help but suspect Vince Cable must have been writing his jokes .....

All in all no knock out blows. Darling will feel he faired OK as will Cameron. But the general public is going to notice their tax, council tax, shopping bill and the cost of filling their car up and paying their mortgage. And believe me that's going to put all of us in a bad mood.

Review

Darling 6/10
Cameron 7/10
Clegg 5/10 - should try harder ( but only heard first few mins so perhaps he improved ).

Update: Headed of to pick up my kids from School wondering if I'd been too kind to Alistair Darling. It seems everyone agrees.

Also Elliott Joseph accuses Darling of hiding a massive Defence cut in his rambling about the last few decades. If true this is disgraceful behaviour ( but the sort of shameless thing you come to expect from liars and deceivers like Labour politicians ).