Originally published @ 2:59 pm, Mon 25th Oct 2010
Slowly, the depth of the problems the Comprehensive Spending Review will cause is becoming clearer, especially services and investment.
This is more severe than anything tried in the eighties.
We were not on the verge of any kind of crisis triggered by the borrowing and indeed, the amount required this year now looks set to be £19,000 million less than projected in March. Indeed, the recent winner of the Nobel Prize for Economics has just accused George Osborne of exaggerating the nature of any crisis unduly.
There are concerns that the inevitability of this package is getting across, and yet when the public start to experience some of the cuts, people will be more interested to hear the fuller story.
Projections for job losses in Nottingham and Nottinghamshire are just under 15,000. Coming from PriceWaterhouseCoopers, the suggestion must be that they estimate the loss of demand to dwarf any gains that might be won from a lower effective lending rates from banks to business.
David Cameron is asserting that unemployment will fall and not rise so it all seems a bit odd and in many ways, the best thing the opposition can do now is to pin down the exact expectations of ministers about the impact of their policies.
However, protest movements will start to develop and the public may choose to express their frustration in next May's elections, or at budget setting meetings in the New Year.
Nottinghamshire County Council have been consulting on a quite vicious budget for some time and Nottinghamshire MP Ken Clarke has said that charities will have to take cuts - somewhat in contradiction to George Osborne's appeal for councils not to and to David Cameron's gloss of the Big society.
The immediate priority is for people who object to explain why. Alan Johnson has made a public appeal, saying “You’re the expert on your local area, or how your family will be affected, so click here to tell us your better way”.
The decision to hit benefits so hard must be tied in with a belief that the people who will be hit hardest are the silent ones; who don't vote; or don't even register to vote. There are concerns that the city of Nottingham's official population estimate might be 40,000 lower than the numbers registered to use the NHS.)
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