Tax and spending horror ahead!

Up to 22nd April the completely incompetent Scottish nincompoop Alistair Darling will smugly deflect all questions on the economy with the response that he will not be tricked into divulging any budget secrets. Spending will therefore continue to be allowed to let rip while tax revenues plunge. The following showing the culture of ignorance within HM Treasury is from an article in the Daily Mail today, linked here:

The Centre for Economics and Business Research warned that revenue from the City will be £39billion in 2009/10, a drop of £28billion from the £67billion in 2006/7.

The think-tank said that public spending on health and education might have to drop by as much as 9 per cent because of falling tax revenues.

CEBR chief executive Doug McWilliams said: 'Predictions in the pre-Budget report do not appear to have factored in more than half of the tax revenue decline and there is little evidence that the longevity of the problem is fully understood in the fiscal part of the Treasury.'

Despite the shortfall, Gordon Brown and other members of the Cabinet are said to be pressing Mr Darling to launch another major 'fiscal stimulus' in next month's Budget. Tax cuts for pensioners are expected to be a priority.

By allowing present spending levels to continue for another month any necessary corrective actions will have to be ever more severe when they eventually arrive. Hundreds of thousands of bloated and unnecessary public employees, including Members of Parliament and Members of the European Parliament, will continue to drain the productive part of the economy when urgent economies could be effected immediately. Payments to the wasteful EU should be curbed forthwith, for example and not have to wait until 22nd April. Meantime could some Conservative Party members perhaps e-mail their leader to point out there is an ongoing economic crisis, it is now five weeks since he last voluntarily mentioned the economy.