One economic point that needs to repeated whenever claims are made that cuts will destroy public services

British government spending in 2000 was around 37% of GDP, it is now 52%. The size of government spending in no other country has grown by so much, over the past decade or indeed any other.

Even more bad economic news

News that the UK economy grew by 0.2% between January and March explains why Gordon Brown was not as bullish about the UK economy as he has been in the past - he of course had the figures before the debate, we mere mortals had to wait until today. 0.2% is less that the widely anticipated 0.4% growth and of course is open to revision.

As usual the BBC are accentuating the positive including the classic line 'That was weaker than the 0.4% growth predicted by many economists, but the figure may be revised.' Somehow I think they are trying to convince us that things may get better, if we just wait. BBC

How does Gordon Brown know the recession will end next quarter?

I blogged on Sunday that:

"Gordon Brown has promised the economy will return to growth by the turn of the year, in his first reaction to news that the UK is still in recession.

His podcast was released on the Number 10 website a day after official figures showed the economy was still shrinking."

Cynical Mrs NotaSheep wonders if this means that our increasingly apparently deluded Prime Minister has found a way to fiddle the figures..."

It seems that Mrs NotaSheep and myself are not alone in having this cynical thought; Alex Masterley writes today that:

"Gordon Brown says the battle to prevent a depression was being won and has promised the economy will return to growth by the turn of the year, in his first reaction to news that the UK is still in recession.
...
...The truth is that if the government really wants to they could lift the economy out of recession by playing the game that Brown played before the recession. It was easy to claim zillions of back to back quarters of unbroken GDP growth when he simply put his foot on the spending gas pedal. The problem was that it was largely wasteful spending.

Sure enough he has promised to cut a some point in the future (not that he will be around), but it would be easy to create a upward blip in government spending to push the next quarter into growth, with a later collapse, perhaps by borrowing and spending, perhaps doing nothing more than a few accounting tricks getting PFI schemes to count as government spending or booking the payment of a defence contract in this quarter just to cook the books.

After all finding an extra 0.4% of GDP (£5 billion) can't be hard when the government is already overspending by 15% of GDP. Whatever it is done, it will likely be just enough to get out of the recession for a quarter, before falling into another recession."

Of course it is also possible to fiddle the figures for two consecutive quarters, the ones leading up to the general election, so as to fool enough of the electorate that the economy was on the up. The fact that the economy would dive afterwards would be of no consequence if Labour managed to win the election, probably be explained by outside influences, and entirely due to the new Conservative government if Labour did lose the election.

As I have said many times before, any oncoming Conservative government needs to have planned a thorough investigation of the lies and deceptions perpetrated by this most unpleasant Labour government; prosecutions should follow in a modern day type of Nuremberg Trials.