Undermining the deceit

Tiberius

Well bullshit your way out of that one, Alistair, Darling.

Lance Grundy

…“each one of these downgrades will significantly increase the amount the Tories have to borrow or spend.”

Or how deeply they will have to cut public spending to reduce the amount they need to borrow.

Bruce, UK

So, a liar and a thief, Who'd've thunk it?

Stephen

Quoted by Peter Hoskins on Saturday evening 'Although Mr King’s forecasts were broadly similar to those set out by Mr Darling in last month’s Budget ...' So the Bank of England agrees with Darling. Doesn't mean it is right of course.

strapworld

Sequestration:

I do hope that word figures high in the New Tory Administration.

Sequestration of all property the country has paid for, all laptops, desktops,plasma screens, furniture and fittings (including bath plugs).

Charge individuals for money they received for Trees, Duck Houses, Moat Cleaning.Clothes Toilet seats !!ANY bloody thing they claimed.

Ensure the Customs and Revenue people demand back tax for everything and anything.

They should not be allowed to get away with anything.

I see from today's telegraph that Maude and Gove have been at it!!

Rob Atkins

So are you going to contact the senior Treasury official again Fraser, and ask him to clarify his answers in the light of this information ?

Incidently, how much is a 0.1% difference difference worth, so we can see the scale of the 'Darling Deceit' ('Brown Bullshit' ?)

JohnOfEnfield

Lying. Fundamental, deliberately misleading, dishonest, deceptive, constant lying is part and parcel of New Labour. It ISN'T just the lack of power (pace Cameron) - it is this blatant, conscious, continuous, deliberate lying which so incenses me.

Well done on nailing yet another deliberate set of lies. Keep up the good work.

Don

If only this idiot had been half as careful with our money as he has been with his......

Moraymint

Are we supposed to be surprised?

The extent of the economic, political and social deceit that characterises this incompetent and immoral Government is now being slowly, but surely laid out before us in all its gory detail.

As I've said before, we're now about to pay the price (as will our children) - financial and social - for allowing the Blair/Brown/Balls trio of political gangsters to inveigle their way into power 12 years ago.

Labour sought power for power's sake and we're about to experience the end result of having been governed for too long by a facile, fatuous and self-serving political class. "Cool Britannia" was the intellectual pinnacle of the Labour Party in Government; look where it's got us.

So, we're in for a very rough ride for longer than most people imagine ... thanks to yet another disastrous episode in British political history courtesy of the Labour Party.

Will the British people never learn about this shower?

Liz Brown

apart from gormless and A darling, noone in their right minds would believe anything that springs from the mouths of the aforementioned....
General Election NOW

Jane Austen

Strapworld - Don't forget Dave's wisteria trimming.

Moraymint

JohnOfEnfield ... yes, me too on the lying thing. I'm often left speechless when I hear or read yet another government politico telling me what is patently arrant nonsense, ie a barefaced lie.

These dolts seem oblivious to the fact that, 24 hours per day, you and I can access virtually any independent, objective source of information about almost any subject. Then, some minister or other government lackey comes on air and spouts complete bullshit and seriously expects the voting public to say, "Oh, that's a minister speaking so it must be the truth".

Yeah, right.

Andy Leeds

The Budget strategy was quite simple: Labour know they have lost the election and are leaving a scorched earth policy like the Nazis. They know that the Tories will have no option but to radically cut spending which will be unpopular with the electorate and will give a high probability that Labour may be able to win the general election in 2015. Dirty, dishonest and dishonourable behaviour from Labour as per usual.

Dodgy Geezer

The problen isn't that MPs are nicking all our money. The problem is that they aren't doing ANYTHING for it.

They were elected to govern. What they have done is let anyone who wants do anything they want to the UK. The US wanted a war - the MPs agreed. Europe wants hundreds of regulations, the MPs agree. They are not doing ANY job at the moment, and that is why the country is so pissed off....

Rhoda Klapp

Perhaps we might get some value for money if Mr Darling were to run some of these treasury figures past the accountant we pay for?

Hysteria

re the lying etc - isn't part of the problem that the Tory party seem unable to follow-up these revelations?

Moraymint - you may be right but how much of this resonates with the man on the Clapham omnibus?

Jonathan_T

Rob Atkins - a 0.1% difference in GDP is c. £1.4bn.

Back of an envelope; this equates to £560m taxation / budget shortfall per 0.1% of GDP, based on an average tax take of 40%.

If you grow the economy at the rates suggested in the graph (I've eyeballed it) from a 2008 base of £1.4trn and apply the above 40% logic, the cumulative impact to 2013 is c. £85bn additional deficit / debt / spending cuts.

However, the actual position is probably worse than this due to stabiliser effects. (i.e. More benefits paid if the economy grows more slowly than forecast by the treasury.)

This is on top of the already appalling debt position.

Therefore no material tax cuts until the second term of a Conservative government.

Verity

Dodgy Geezer - "The problen isn't that MPs are nicking all our money. The problem is that they aren't doing ANYTHING for it."

I would give them even more to do less.

TGF UKIP

Hysteria hits the nail on the head.

These figures are all very interesting, Fraser, and serve to pump up our blood pressure but until your useless Tory mates learn how to be an opposition they really are pretty pointless. Use them in your NoW column they'll do far more good there than preaching to the converted here.

This really is, though, all part of the problem with your mate Dave. You rightly upbraided him last Wednesday for allowing Gordon to go on and on about Tory cuts without Dave making the point back that the Budget had built into it Gordon's own cuts.

This is obviously Gordon's strategy. If he loses then all the required cuts are Tory cuts, if as is just as likely, Dave blows it and Gordon wins he is supremely confident that with all his media support he will be able to finesse the matter and blame the international economy - I'm sure Flanders, Peston etc will have no problems producing the required charts to back him up.

Dave needs to start getting the message over now about not only Gordon's cuts but the scale of additional cuts Gordon's lying is trying to disguise.

Your graphs, Fraser, are very persuasive and if even I can understand them then so can at least 95% of the rest of the population. So what the Tories really need to do is to get graphic illustrations like this out to the public via newspaper ads. By calling Gordon's stats lies it will ensure the wider media then take up the story and get it sown in the public mind the notion that the cuts to come will be "Labour Cuts" not Tory Cuts."

john miller

As I said at the time, is there no way we can prosecute ministers who blatantly lie?

You can lie about crime, schools or hospitals as a member of the party, but there are definitve laws regarding finance, put in place by this party.

(I can't bring myself to use words like Government, or capitalise positions of state)

I really am quite old, but I've never seen such a cynical budget, by a party with no concern for facts.

Indeed, the defining characteristic of this party will be its auto-reflexive aversion to the truth. How many times have we heard members of the party lie, merely because they thought the truth would be worse?

And yes, Darling should be dismissed from the Cabinet.

john miller

Bit late on the photo here, but if you were running a caption competition , courtesy of BT in the 1970s it'd be:

"It's for youhoo"

(But not for meeee)

Edward

Jane Austen !
Thank you for mentioning the wisteria. Seems collective (and convenient) loss of memory is a far greater threat to health than swine flu ever was.

Moraymint !
How correct you are with your post of 4.56pm. Especially 2nd paragraph, first sentence.
Suggest we Google "David Cameron wisteria".

Sure, Brown, Darling, Hoon, Blears, Smith, probably both Balls (although the comparative silence around these two is sinister), have succeeded in making themselves completely unelectable.

Dave is probably en route to become the next elected PM. What worries me is the apparent absolution which many Coffee Housers seem prepared to extend to him.
To me, our anger seems very selective.

Hysteria ?
Are you sure you've chosen the correct "nom de plume" ?
Shouldn't it be "Wisteria" ?

As for the deceit as per topic.
Yeah. But what else would we expect ?

ManicBeancounter

There are a number of comments that view the optimistic forecasts of HM Treasury as deliberate lies. I do not think this is the case. Rather, the government has for over a decade tried to reshape the truth through political spin. The problem is that they cannot now see the world with any kind of objectivity. Rather, everything is filtered through PR-tinted spectacles. The Treasury, after a decade with Gordon Brown in charge, are caught up in this mentality.
Thirty years ago, other economic forecasters were envious of the Treasury, as they had the biggest forecasting models. They probably still do, but the computers are handicapped by the operatives.

DM

Can you get Darling to do a Q and A for Coffee housers?
Indeed, can you get any of the cabinet to do one, or are they all running scared?