Spending Review 2010: £83 Billion Sounds a Lot – But These Cuts Are Nowhere Near Enough
THE TELEGRAPH: The Government is making a weak start in its attempt to deal with the deficit, says Simon Heffer.

There will be something new, we must be sure, to be announced today in the Chancellor’s review of public spending, even though so much of it has been leaked already and, of course, the defence review was announced yesterday. We are meant to be awed by the £83 billion reduction in the deficit planned over the next four years, but should doubt this attempt (which will probably be reasonably successful in the short term) to grab the favourable attentions of the markets will be enough.

Before George Osborne took office I had grave reservations about his understanding of economics and, more to the point, his understanding of why exactly we are in this mess. Nothing he has said since May, and nothing leaked in the last few days, has altered this view. Maybe we shall be pleasantly surprised by his genius today, but we should not be banking on it.

Rather, we should have reservations about what we have been told is proposed. The reduction of £83 billion sounds like a lot of money, but it still represents a £92 billion increase in public spending by 2014-15. It will leave a state that is still too large, that is too much of a drain on the productive areas of the economy, and that is undertaking functions that could be done more efficiently and cheaply if transferred to the private sector. It will also leave a level of debt that will impoverish us steadily as interest rates rise, as one day they must. More should have been cut, and there should have been no shame in having an ideological ambition to take the state out of people’s lives as far as possible. After all, it is part of the Liberal Democrat intellectual heritage to do that, isn’t it? Continue reading and comment >>> Simon Heffer | Tuesday, October 19, 2010

Cameron Orders Ministers to Draw Up 40 Per Cent Spending Cuts – the Biggest in History
Doomsday savings: Prime Minister David Cameron is preparing departments for cuts of up to 40 per cent. Photograph: Mail On Sunday
MAIL ON SUNDAY: David Cameron is ready to approve the biggest public-spending cuts in the history of the developed world in a dramatic bid to cut ­Britain’s soaring national debt.

He has ordered Cabinet Ministers to draw up ‘Doomsday’ savings of up to a staggering 40 per cent which could see vast parts of the public ­services shut down and tens of thousands of policemen, teachers, town hall workers and other civil servants lose their jobs.

The proposed cutbacks are even more extreme than emergency reductions used in other countries such as Canada and Ireland and are double the amount of the Geddes cuts imposed after the First World War when Britain faced bankruptcy from government debt and waste.

Mr Cameron’s shock initiative is a massive personal and political gamble.

There were gasps at a meeting of the Cabinet on Tuesday when Ministers were informed of the package.

It could provoke a wave of crippling strikes – and may well threaten Mr Cameron’s alliance with Liberal Democrat leader Nick Clegg. Many Lib Dem MPs, already unhappy with the VAT rise and cuts in benefits, are likely to rebel against the draconian new measures.

However, if it works, it could result in a ­second Election victory for the Prime Minister. Continue reading and comment >>> Simon Walters | Sunday, July 04, 2010

Italy’s Rude Awakening: Perhaps la Vita Isn’t Always So Dolce After All!
THE TELEGRAPH: Italy is the latest eurozone nation to be threatened by finacial woe - after Silvio Berlusconi assured his compatriots for months that they had weathered the crisis.

They were the advance guard of an army of Italians whose anger is rising as their country joins the rest of the continent struggling with the worst economic crisis of recent times.

Waving banners, blowing whistles and chanting "Shame!", hundreds of public service workers rallied outside Italy's parliament in Rome to protest against the austerity package announced by the centre-Right government of Silvio Berlusconi.

The measures aim to shave 24 billion euros off government spending in the next two years.

They include a crackdown on tax evasion and welfare fraud, a three year salary freeze for Italy's 3.4 million civil servants and substantial cuts to regional government which will almost certainly result in less money for hospitals and schools.

In pushing through the package with an emergency parliamentary decree, Italy joined Portugal and Spain in trying to fend off contagion from the crisis which has brought deadly riots to Greece and shaken confidence in the euro. The cuts are greater in scale than the £6 billion of immediate savings recently announced by Britain's new coalition government, but are comparable with what the UK may face over the next 12 months.

The protesters, mostly women, who had gathered outside Italy's lower house of parliament in Piazza di Montecitorio, a cobbled square lined with expensive hotels and boutiques, were stung by the announcement and fearful for the future.

For months Mr Berlusconi had been assuring his countrymen that Italy has weathered the global economic crisis much better than the rest of Europe.

The government's overnight switch from breezy optimism to dire warnings of "very tough sacrifices" in order to spare Italy from a Greek-style bailout, and associated international ignominy attached, made the announcement of the austerity package all the more shocking to those with most to lose. Advance guard of angry women lead Italians into European protests over austerity cuts >>> Nick Squires in Rome | Saturday, May 29, 2010

Spending 'Shock Wave' Just the Start, Ministers Warn
THE TELEGRAPH: A £6 billion package of cuts in public spending is “only the first step” towards repairing Britain’s public finances and even tougher cuts will follow, ministers have warned.



David Laws, the Chief Secretary to the Treasury, said that today’s cuts – which will fall on Whitehall departments and local councils – are just a foretaste of a much larger and more painful austerity programme to be unveiled later this [year].

Mr Laws and George Osborne, the Chancellor today unveiled cuts worth a total of £6.2 billion, which will mean cuts in civil service job numbers, quango budgets and Whitehall spending on advertising and consultants.

Local councils will bear a large share of the cuts, which could raise questions about the services they deliver. There will be a cut of £311 million in the money handed to local authorities for education services like school transport.

Government payments into Child Trust Funds will also end. >>> James Kirkup, Political Correspondent | Monday, May 24, 2010

TELEGRAPH BLOG: George Osborne and David Laws show political will – but this was the easy bit >>> Benedict Brogan | Monday, May 24, 2010

EU Crisis Makes Cuts Imperative Says Clegg As Queen's Speech Is Leaked
Deputy Prime Minister Nick Clegg on the Andrew Marr show. Photograph: The Sunday Times
THE SUNDAY TIMES: Public spending cuts have been made imperative by the crisis in the eurozone, Nick Clegg, the Deputy Prime Minister, said today as the new coalition Government prepared to start chipping away at Britain’s record £156 billion deficit.

Years of Labour “throwing money around like there was no tomorrow” had left a “black hole” in the country’s finances, he said.

Mr Clegg’s scathing assessment of the outgoing regime came as George Osborne, the Chancellor, prepared to announce tomorrow where the axe will fall for his first £6bn of cuts — most of which will be ploughed straight into paying off the deficit.

Having backed Labour’s assertion during the election campaign that cuts this year would jeopardise the fragile economic recovery, Mr Clegg told BBC1’s Andrew Marr Show that turbulence in the eurozone had lent a greater urgency to balancing Britain’s books.

“I don’t think anybody could have anticipated then quite how sharply the economic conditions in the eurozone would have deteriorated and that the need to show that we are trying to get to grips with this suddenly became much greater,” the Liberal Democrat leader said.

“That is why we need to show at a more accelerated timetable than I had initially thought that we are going to get to grips with this great black hole in our public finances.

“The outgoing Labour Government was just throwing around money like there was no tomorrow, probably knowing that they were going to lose the election, making extraordinary commitments left, right and centre, many of which they knew they couldn't honour.

“So not only are we going to have to deal with cuts, we are also going to have to actually deal with some of the pledges that the Government made in the past which they didn’t even provide budgets for.

“The age of plenty where money could be thrown around in almost carelessness, which is what the outgoing Labour Government has done for some time, now is over.” Read on and comment >>> Sadie Gray | Sunday, May 23, 2010