By: John Charles Dyer, UK Correspondent
21 August 2012.
BBC announced today government “unexpectedly” borrowed £600 million in July to meet operational expenditures.
Why?
Mechanically, the government’s total tax take was .8% below 2011 due to a 20% drop in corporations taxes. Tax receipts normally cover July costs. Last year, for instance, tax receipts exceeded expenditures by 2.8 billion pounds. Other taxes held as expected.
Additionally, expenditures on welfare in July were 5.1% more than they had been at the same time in 2011.
Spin
The Conservative-led Treasury promptly characterized the figure as “disappointing” (a new but frequently used favourite word, it seems, for the Coalition). A Treasury spokesperson laid the blame to North Sea Oil revenues, firmly rejecting any idea this news should lead to a change in course. She argued- bewilderingly- that the figures show the importance of sticking to the plan.
Both the Office for National Statistics and the usual suspect spokespersons for the anonymous “markets” downplayed the results.
The Office cautioned the figures included elements hard to calculate.
The business community concluded the results really weren’t unexpected given the economy (although the business community hadn’t expected it the day prior). An analyst for those anonymous “markets” said, “the trend so far isn’t disastrous” (Inspiring, that). Another spokesman for business played down the news, saying only maybe the government might need to change course somewhere in the future “if.”
Say what?
What sort of a disaster did they have in mind?
Maybe a change “if” what? Business analysts have been saying this for over a year without delimiting when too much will be too much. How much worse would they like it to grow?
The facts are, four months into the UK financial year the government has borrowed £44.9 billion. That’s £9.3 billion ahead of 2011. More significantly, but for the coincidence of the subsuming of Royal Post Office Pensions during this period the deficit would have been the second highest in recorded history. By its own standards for judging success or failure, the Treasury’s “credible” Plan is an abject failure. By the standards of everyone who isn’t a die hard supporter of the plan it has been an abject failure for some time. I needn’t bore the reader with the rehash.
The simplicity
It is easier to write from anxiety than from wisdom. But the product is often no more cathartic than enlightening. Sometimes it’s best to let silence roll over you, then to learn the point you’ve missed.
The simplicity of that point is, either the Conservative led government’s plan is the abject failure it appears to be, or the Conservatives are succeeding at a plan they have not disclosed to the rest of us.
Wouldn’t that be a novel event in politics?
Is there another explanation for why they insist they must stick to the course, why in fact these figures prove it? Insanity comes to mind. So does the last scene from the Prisoner when the prisoner discovers that “the man” who is number 1 is really a hooting chimp.
The good news is, the BBC’s journalistic instinct appears to have reawaken. At least three BBC reporters have now publicly confronted the government with the inconvenient fact that their figures that do not add up do not add up.
That too is the simplicity. Facts and figures that do not add up most likely do not add up because they do not add up. Plans that fail to perform as advertised most likely fail to perform because they are the wrong approach. One does not have to take hallucinogens while sitting on top of a mountain beneath a starry night to figure it all out. One need only smell what one’s shoveling.
Are you paying attention, America?
I sincerely hope so. The UK Plan A is what the Ryan Plan looks like on the ground. They have taken a banking crisis and morphed it into an economic disaster. That disaster presents real danger it will morph again into social upheaval.
Vote smart.
Ignore the confidence men trafficking in “starving the beast.”
It is you and your loved ones who they will hurt.