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The Pre-Budget Report

If Gordon Brown were to permit the assumptions behind his predictions to be made public perhaps they wouldn't go this far wrong.

When I get some time I need to try to work out what is happening separately to private and public sector GDP. The impression is that the private sector is in a recession, but the public sector not.

Similarly superficially it appears that Labour have gone for reducing the public sector as a proportion of the GDP, but it will take reading the detailed papers - which I might be able to do tomorrow, to work out what is really going on.

It is also unclear whether raising the tax take from the North Sea will act to further undermine the UK's Energy Security. It might and it might not. Working this out takes some time.

As with the pensions £5bn tax raid a few years ago raising the tax take from part of the economy undermines other aspects. The pensions raid gave a short term gain and a long term damage to pensions. That is even though the stock market did not really give it any detailed attention.

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