20 October 2010

a mature analysis of the spending review



Adding the letter n to the key word in news reports makes the government's austerity measures easier to swallow.
From The Guardian (sort of):

Spending review 2010: George Osborne announces extra £7bn of welfare cunts

Chancellor unveils biggest UK spending cunts in decades, telling MPs 'today is the day that Britain steps back from the brink'

George Osborne today announced an extra £7bn of welfare cunts, allowing him to turn the tables on Labour by claiming reductions in Whitehall departments would be lower than those planned by the previous government...
Alan Johnson, the shadow chancellor, attacked "the deepest cunts to public spending in living memory", which he warned could end up "stifling" the economic recovery...
The extra raid on welfare gave the chancellor a highly political flourish at the end of his spending announcement. Osborne said that extra cunts to welfare meant that departmental budgets would be cunt by 19% over the next four years.
This is one percentage point lower than the 20% cunt implied in Labour's plans to halve the fiscal deficit over four years.
To loud cheers from Tory MPs, who rose to wave their order papers, the chancellor said: "The average savings in departmental budgets will be lower than the previous government implied in its March budget. Instead of cunts of 20% there will be cunts of 19% over four years. So I thank them for their input and look forward to their support."...
In a highly political speech lasting just over an hour, the chancellor said the £83bn public spending cunts over the next four years in the government's most severe financial retrenchment in decades were based on reform, fairness and growth...
But there will be cunts. Police budgets will be cunt by 16% over four years, councils will face cunts of 7.1% a year, and the Home Office and the Ministry of Justice will see their budgets cunt by 6% a year...
Osborne insisted that those with the "broadest shoulders should bear the greatest burden" and said the Queen had agreed to lead the nation in stepping "back from the brink" after agreeing to spending cunts that will help confront a "decade of debt"...
Osborne told MPs: "We have reformed welfare and cunt waste and made sure that we are all in this together. And taken our country back from the brink of bankruptcy."...
For some on the government benches the cunts were an "ideological objective," Johnson claimed.