We’ve heard the UKUncut movement and others making claims about the deficit not being as bad as we’ve experienced in the past, particularly the post WWII years; and how Britain effectively spent it’s way out of it then, but here is an article explaining that we’ve never had it so… well, so-so!
Are we being collectively conned out of our wealth and jobs and pensions?
http://m.guardian.co.uk/politics/2011/mar/02/unsaid-on-debt-and-deficit?cat=politics&type=article
The Guardian, Wed 2 Mar 2011 00.05 GMT
George Osborne dissimulates. He knows that Ed Balls is at odds with Labour party policy on cuts, knowing that we have 12 to 13 years to pay off debt and deficit. But he also knows that our level of debt (less than 60% of GDP net of bank assets) is within Maastricht Treaty limits (60%) and lower than almost all OECD countries; that this debt is low by historical standards (we sustained debt at more than 100% of GDP for 20 years up until the early 1970s); that debt repayments (less than 3% of GDP) are lower than they were under Thatcher (5.15%) and Major (3.8%); that our deficit is partly created by a low overall tax-take (around 36% compared with the EU average of 40%). He knows this because these are official statistics (available on Google – mostly Office for National Statistics but also ukpublicspending.co.uk).
