Spending review leaves little left to cut

Yesterday the chancellor George Osborne unveiled his plans for a further £11.5bn of cuts covering the financial year 2015-16.

While there was the expected massive reductions in some government departments, Justice 10%, Environment 10%, Local Government 10%, Work and Pensions 9.5%, Energy 8%, basically meaning that there really isn’t that much more that can be cut.  

There was also an announcement for a potential cap on total welfare spending, limiting welfare spending to £100bn, which as it now stands around £112bn means that the £12bn difference could be an emergency in case this latest round of cuts don’t have the desired effect.   

We shouldn’t forget that Osborne predicted that his intial spending cuts would solve the country’s economic problems before the next election, now he predicts around 2018.

There was also the puzzling plan to spend an extra £10bn on the HS2 high speed rail links, which given that £30+bn has already been allocated for it and nobody seems to want it, and that it will take 20 years before it’s up and running, makes the decision even more bizarre, because government projects never finish on time so this rail link will probably be finished in 2042 not 2032 and will have cost £60bn rather than £40bn.

Another announcement that was made, today, is that between 2015 and 2020 the government will spend £100bn on various infrastructure projects, great but why then why not start these projects now, if these projects are so vital why delay them?

If the government wanted an investment in infrastructure that would boost the economy and create jobs and could be built relatively quickly, might I suggest building another runaway at Heathrow.  

As usually I managed to find something amusing from this incredibly serious set of circumstances and it concerns the plan to axe the winter fuel payments for expats in hot countries.

That’s not that funny, but what it is that there will be a test to see if the country has a warmer climate than the UK, right these are hot countries, I’ll say it again hot countries, by definition they will have a warmer climate than the UK so scrap the test and just take the money.