Duncan Weldon from the TUC has, I note, already done the work of looking at the impact of the supposed new investment plans on previously announced intentions. As he has reported:
George Osborne just made a great deal of fuss about his plans to increase capital spending from 2015/16. The immediate question is — how big is this boost? The short answer is — there isn't really one.
Osborne spoke repeatedly about investing £50bn a year and given current public sector net investment is around £25bn a year — these seems like an awful lot, a doubling of investment spend. However, it appears Osborne was talking about increasing gross rather than net investment spending.
Gross public sector net investment is around £47bn a year and was previously expected to be £50.4bn in 2015/16 according to the OBR (table 4.18).
In other words there doesn't actually appear to be an increase in capital spending.
How very misleading. This isn't a real increase and it is not even scheduled to start for two years, the economy needs a boost now — not smoke and mirrors about the future.
In other words, there is no new investment being announced.
Just cuts.
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Cuts which will make things worse as you do not boost an economy by shrinking it. It’s a real shame more people don’t understand this.
Exactly, Richard, the last two words of your post capture the pure, evil, intent of this piece of showmanship. Cuts: poverty, despair, suffering. Interesting in a week that the BBC aired a programme on what it was like be be in the workhouse (there’s a perfectly preserved example a few miles from me at Southwell, if anyone ever wants a look inside one).
Additionally, and importantly, yet more lambasting and punishment of anything and anyone who works in the public sector. Aren’t we the bloodsuckers, leeching the life blood out of the private sector that would otherwise blossom and solve all our economic ills! No pay rises for you lot. You are, after all, only slightly better than the scroungers that are driving this country into the ground.
Having lived through the age of Thatcher I never, ever, thought there could be a more heartless, vindictive and – lets be frank – evil, Tory government. How wrong I was.
Agreed
Agreed, but we should focus on the economic downside of this action.
The pay restraint unless confined to top/upper level pay scales means less spending on private sector products!
The cuts increase unemployment, again reducing demand for private sector goods.
The oncoming privatisations will result in less jobs, which will be lower paid, again reducing demand for private sector products.
The lower paid jobs will result in less tax being collected, which will hit the funding of newly privatised functions of the state.
We will be locked into a downward spiral, which will not only of course destroy the wealth of the 99%, but will eventually destroy the wealth of the 1% too.
Public and Private sectors are yin and yang. They should be in balance. Most of initial research and development is best done by the public sector, while the final development and bringing the product to market is what the private sector does best.
The private sector is not more efficient, that is a complete myth. In disaster situations the “free market” is a liability. An extreme example is the fact that broadly “free market” economies had to convert to “command control” economies in order to win World War 2!