Did George Osborne go to the UEA with Phil Jones?

I only half-watched little Georgie Osborne, with the sound off, as he gave his Autumn statement.  There were no surprises, at least none to readers of this blog who have been told by me, courtesy of The Coffee House, that there have been no cuts and that borrowing was rocketing despite all the flim-flam from the Treasury.  Here again are some diagrams from the Office of Budget Responsibility (OBR) which illustrate matters better than my words - or Georgie's come to that!

 

Mind you, the OBR figures, although constantly more pessimistic than the Treasury, are still way out.  Perhaps their 'experts', too, went to UEA along with Phil Jones and George Osborne!  For example, I would not bet the deeds of the house on the wishful thinking forecast of growth in 2013, '14 and '15.

And as for our mounting national debt, little Georgie is forecast to outdo Darling's last estimate as a Labour Chancellor when you measure it as a % of GDP:

And he has virtually equalled it when you measure it in money terms:

But nowhere do I sense that any of them in Westminster or Whitehall realise that things are going to get even worse than they might imagine.  The European banks under the lash of instructions from the Euro-Bureaucrats are busy slashing their loan books in order to comply with strict new regulations ordering them to recapitalise in the New Year.  The three measures of money supply, M1, M2, M3, are declining fast and as Ambrose Evans-Pritchard reports in The Telegraph the money-men are becoming alarmed:

"This is very worrying," said Tim Congdon from International Monetary Research. "What it shows is that the implosion of the banking system on the periphery is now outweighing any growth left in the core. We are seeing the destruction of money and it is a clear warning of serious trouble over the next six months."

Better just pencil in those estimates, George, don't use ink!  Mind you there was some gallows humour to be had watching and listening to 'Blinky' Balls trying to strut his stuff.  The man can't even deliver a written speech coherently; and his (temporary?) leader sitting next to him with his big panda eyes gazing up in admiration and his head nodding like one of those plastic dogs you used to see in the back of Cortinas gave every appearance of being sub-normal.  What a shower!

 

Comments

[JK]

"...Here again are some diagrams from the Office of Budget Responsibility (OBR) which illustrate matters better than my words...

Question David.

That word just after Budget... "Responsibility"?

Have they changed your dictionary's definition too?

[David Duff]

Not sure I understand your point, JK. The OBR does not have respnsibility for deciding on the budget but it does have responsibility for producing independent statistics and forecasts as a means, after Brown & Balls, of keeping Chancellors fairly honest. The fact that their forecasts were pretty hopeless, too, does not breed confidence!