For anyone having read both the BBC and Telegraph reports of today’s government borrowing data releases they could be forgiven for wondering where on earth the title for this post comes from as our wonderful MSM paint a rather different picture.
The Telegraph headline has this :
Borrowing falls, cue the fanfare, all is good.
The BBC are no better :
A fall in borrowing, how wonderful and we are back on track as well – cue fanfare, dancing unicorns and hoola girls in Downing Street.
Why exactly do our news providers continue to paint a rosy picture of the UK debt situation and give the Labour debt deniers the ammunition to continue their screams of anguish about non-existent cuts?
Most people in this country would probably glance a those articles in passing (if they do actually go near a news source at all) and come away with the impression that we are in a reasonable position compared with some of the other sovereign horrors currently in the news.
Even reading the actual articles does not give much away as there are lots of mentions of lower borrowing, improved receipts and even rising government spending in the opening paragraphs with the dirty details hidden near the end of the article, mentioned mostly as an aside to fill a few column inches.
The ugly reality of our debt situation is just as the post title says – government debt continues to rise as does government spending driven mostly by ever increasing debt interest payments.
Two months into the financial year and the UK owes £920 billion pounds :
Elsewhere, the figures showed net debt, excluding financial interventions, was £920.9bn, equivalent to 60.6pc of gross domestic product (GDP), a record high.
I don’t even want to think about the total owed including the bank bailouts as it is now a truly eyewatering £2.3 trillion pounds (source ONS – opens PDF) :
net debt excluding the temporary effects of financial interventions was £920.9 billion,
equivalent to 60.6 per cent of gross domestic product (GDP) (£2299.8 billion, equivalent to
151.4 per cent of GDP including interventions)
Our current record high borrowing is only destined to go much higher reaching a true trillion this year alone :
The May figure brings total public borrowing for the financial year to date to £27.4 billion.
Britain’s independent Office for Budget Responsibility forecasts that public borrowing will total £122bn during the current 2011/12 tax year, more than £20bn lower than the £143.2bn borrowed in the previous year.
The maths for clarity – two months in and borrowing of £27.4 billion leaving £95 billion for the remainder of the year to add to our already owing £920 billion giving a projected total next April of £1.015 trillion pounds.
Remember too that for all the supposed spending cuts and pain the government is going to continue borrowing each and every year until 2015/16 when we will collectively owe £1.261 billion or another £341 billion than we owe today.
The table below for the 2011 budget report (link here pdf) shows both increasing government spending and continued borrowing all the way through this parliament – again that is not what we hear from our wonderful MSM (and similarly from the unions, Labour and even our own dear leaders) :
Current expenditure up from £601 billion to £713 billion in six years and borrowing in 2015-16 still £29 billion pounds.
The MSM treats us as fools and seem to take their lead from our politicians who continue to say one thing when their own departments publish information to the contrary.
What a sad and pathetic little country we have become.
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