On Jul 23, 8:48*am, allan tracy wrote:
The national debt since 1970 has averaged about 50% - currently it's
39% (including PFI but not public sector pensions, since the former's
new and the latter hasn't changed). So the government has a decent
amount of room for manouevre.

I would contend that we won't actually know what level of debt this
Government has built up and is continuing to build up (Quote Dianne
Abbott on This Week when asked whether the Government will cut back on
spending or borrow, "Oh borrow, of course, we are a deeply unpopular
Government with only two years to go before an election, course we'll
borrow.") until either they're forced to go to the IMF or the other
lot get in (and they’ll probably lie as well).

When did UK politicians become so honest?

One still doubts that this will negatively impact Crossrail.

On Wed, 23 Jul 2008, 1506 wrote:

On Jul 23, 8:48*am, allan tracy wrote:
The national debt since 1970 has averaged about 50% - currently it's
39% (including PFI but not public sector pensions, since the former's
new and the latter hasn't changed). So the government has a decent
amount of room for manouevre.

I would contend that we won't actually know what level of debt this
Government has built up and is continuing to build up (Quote Dianne
Abbott on This Week when asked whether the Government will cut back on
spending or borrow, "Oh borrow, of course, we are a deeply unpopular
Government with only two years to go before an election, course we'll
borrow.") until either they're forced to go to the IMF or the other
lot get in (and they?ll probably lie as well).

When did UK politicians become so honest?

MPs who are not ministers are generally pretty open about such things. We
just rarely hear what they have to say. Read some Hansard transcripts of
less headline-grabbing debates, or some committee work, and you may be
surprised at the level of debate.

tom

--
We can only see a short distance ahead, but we can see plenty there that
needs to be done. -- Alan Turing