Ordered!

The BBC like the partly EU funded organisation that it is sees nothing wrong in reporting that:

"The European Union has ordered France, Spain, Ireland and Greece to reduce their budget deficits - the difference between their spending and tax take. "

Ordered? Well at least we know where the power lies in the EU, and it's not with the nation states.

The BBC article continues:

"Countries that use the euro are supposed to restrict deficits to 3% of their gross domestic product (GDP).

But bank bailouts and falling tax revenues have taken their toll and seen budgets fall out of its range.

The UK was also urged to cut its deficit but as it has not adopted the euro it does not face EU sanctions. "

And that concludes the first paragraph which is all most people read and indeed may see on their PC monitor (depending upon screen resolution). The next sentence is very interesting and surely worthy of being the lead-in sentence being as it relates to the UK:

"The UK expects its deficit will balloon to 11.9% of GDP next year before falling to 5.5% by 2012/13. "

Two things strike me; first that the UK's deficit will be four times that allowed for members of the Eurozone and second how readily the BBC parrot the Labour Budget spin that the UK deficit will fall to 5.5% by 2012/13. It is also amusing that this rise and subsequent fall are apparently the expectations of the UK; surely it would be more accurate to say that Gordon Brown and Alistair Darling claim that the deficit will fall to 5.5% as I do not know of any independent economics forecaster who would agree with them.