The slog starts today
Peter Hoskin 9:02am
Welcome to Stage Two of the government's life. The first stage was the Budget, which
established the size of the fiscal mountain looming over the coalition. The third stage will be the difficult, four-year slog up to the top. But today – the Spending Review – is all
about determining the route for that ascent. In just a few hours we will know when, where and why the pain will come. Don't forget to pack sandwiches.
Of course, with this roadmap being drawn out in Westminster, we already know some of the details. This morning's papers major on the fact – snapped from Danny Alexander's hands yesterday – that almost 500,000 public sector jobs will be lost over the next four to five years. And then there are the actual departmental settlements. Defence will face cuts of 8 percent, as set out yesterday. Schools will come out of the process with even smaller cuts, perhaps around the 5 percent mark. The Home Office and Justice department will face much larger ones. Still, though, question marks persist over what will, I think, be the bloodiest political battleground of this Parliament: welfare.
It is always worth reminding ourselves, and the government, that the spending review will be easy compared to what is to come. Yes, the numbers don't look all that significant on a graph. But, as Fraser pointed out yesterday, there are lives behind the statistics. Recent polls suggest that the public are firmly behind Cameron and Osborne when it comes to the public finances – which is to say, they agree with the coalition in theory. From today, we will discover whether they agree in practice too.
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oldtimer
October 20th, 2010 9:23am Report this commentWhat we will get today is the roadmap. The practical difficulties and opposition will mostly appear once we are on the journey.
The BBC, this am, was doing its misleading best to blame the totality of the problem on the City of London. They have their share of blame, of course. But it conveniently overlooks the part played by those one time pillars of the Scottish banking establishment RBS and HBOS - not to mention the profligate spending of the last government.
John Findlater
October 20th, 2010 9:42am Report this commentOldtimer is correct and not only in the lousy Today programme, I switched on the radio at 4 am this morning and the World Service spent an hour banging on about it,,with the usual left wing bias.
I hope the chancellor is going to take a big knife to government spending and, after Ed,s refusal to apologise yesterday for the 13 years of Socilaist incompetence, when for instance they ordered land based figther aircraft for the new carriers, we don,t have to worry about their pathetic response.
Frankly after their incompetence, Ed and the rest of the Socialists including the Traitor Brown, should be in prison, not parliament.
I am going to find particular enjoyment in the slow squeeze on the BBC, like freezing the licence, having them finance the world service and having to finance the free TV licence.
True, I would like to see the TV licence abolished and the BBC, like all socialists, exterminated,, but its slow tortuous death will be equally pleasing.
Edward McLaughlin
October 20th, 2010 10:26am Report this commentOK lets get on with it. Let's do the stretch.
One thing though: why, in this country which is to sacrifice so many jobs and which all reasonable people realise, must at least for the near future, reduce services and contract in every department, with all the unavoidable hardship this entails; why alongside this, are we still accepting and housing even a single immigrant? Why are we not reducing the size of overseas aid by even one pound?
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