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  1. Wealth
March 25, 2010

A Budget, in theory

By Spear's

The term Budget implies numbers, as in 1, 2, 3 etc., but this Budget had no numbers of any consequence.

Yesterday afternoon a man in shock, as in shock of white hair, stood up and read out the obituary of something once called New Labour, from a document called ‘The Budget’. The term Budget implies numbers, as in 1, 2, 3 etc., but this Budget had no numbers of any consequence, which made it sound much better in the New Labour World of Spin.

Read expert reaction and analysis here

The UK’s mind-boggling National Debt of £875.5 billion – actually it’s £2,200.0 billion if you add it up properly – will be halved in four years, said Budget, turning even whiter at the absurdity of such a notion, but there were no numbers attached to this improbable idea at all, which is why it wasn’t a Budget.

New Labour began in 1997 when the public finances were in sound shape, thanks to eighteen continuous years of good old Conservative financial management. The PSBR was £26.4 billion then and falling towards balance over the next four years. Thirteen years later and New Labour has once again bankrupted the UK’s finances with a PSBR of £170.0 billion in 2010 and £168.0 billion forecast for next, and that’s before their bank bail-outs.


 
This is why the Budget was actually an Obituary Notice for New Labour, which was only ever the Old Tax-and-Spend Labour Party and had nothing new about it, apart from its Spin that is, as in Spinning-out-of-Control.

More worryingly, New Labour has presided over 750,000 lost jobs in manufacturing, jobs paid for by the productive private sector and also the taxes on them, and replaced them by 750,000 unproductive bureaucratic pen-pushers paid for by the taxpayer.

True to Labour form, these pen-pushers weren’t impressed by Budget either and went on strike and picketed the House of Budget even as he was being delivered of his Obituary, which naturally omitted all these important numbers altogether. Needless to say GDP was not affected by one iota by this strike by Budget’s employees, as they produce nothing at all.

When Labour came to power the public sector was 40% of GDP, but now it’s over 52%. Both these figures were not in the Budget as they are all-important, but they are in the Obituary. If Labour win the General Election, then poor Budget will have to deliver an Autumn Statement that will have to have some real figures in it.

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This is why all voters should do the decent thing and vote Labour out as an act of selfless humanity, and herald the beginning of a long-term salvation for the nation’s finances. New Labour, you see, is destined for the dustbin of history as the worst government of all time: it’s been enough of a shock to turn your hair white.

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