Skip to main content

Tories vote with Labour on Pre Budget Report

Confusion reigned in The House as the Conservatives decided to vote with Labour to ensure that there wasn't a vote on the Pre Budget Report. Personally I think they didn't know what was going on and will regret this in the future. Some came into the aye lobby and wandered out again. Technically there was a vote to have a vote 30 seconds before the end of the debate against which Labour and the Tories voted.

On the substantive issue there is a need for investment to bring back confidence into the economy (which is what it needs). The word "kick start" is misleading in that sense.

Looking through the PBR itself, however, the government seem to be ignoring £70,000,000,000 of debt (not precisely), £37bn of bank funding and £33bn of off-balance sheet - Enron style government debt. (I have those figures from a March report of 505 off balance sheet PFI projects). We are committed to paying £156bn over the next 30 years for all the PFI projects which has a net present value of £86bn. The capital value, however, is recorded at just under £33bn.

Comments

Popular posts from this blog

NHS reorganisation No 3,493,233

Followers of my blog will have seen the NHS question about how many reorganisations have we had. We've yet another. The number of PCTs (Primary Care Trusts) nationally is to halve. This means merging East and North. (and then probably HoB and south). It would be nice if people would stick with one structure. There is a quotation ( Which sadly does not appear to be a true quotation ) We trained hard . . . but it seemed that every time we were beginning to form up into teams we would be reorganized. I was to learn later in life that we tend to meet any new situation by reorganizing; and a wonderful method it can be for creating the illusion of progress while producing confusion, inefficiency, and demoralization. But has to have been originated by someone. The web link shown goes through the derivation which appears to be more linked to an anonymous British Soldier WW2 than any Roman or Greek General called by a name perming 2 out of (Gaius, Galus, Petronius and Arbiter). From the...