Savage cuts: talk is cheap, action rather less so

So, in the fallout from Geoff Hoon and Patricia Hewitt's attempt to 'clear the air', Alistair Darling announces that Britain faces the toughest spending cuts in twenty years. David Cameron responds by saying that his Party will "go further" in cutting the deficit than Labour.


Apart from the nonsense that they can go further than Labour - there comes a point when the budget deficit is eliminated and you can't go any further - there is still very little in the way of firm commitments. The occasional moan about the amount spent by the Central Office of Information (£500 million), suggestions of bureaucratic efficiencies without any idea of what those might be, reducing the number of quangos without saying what or who will carry out the tasks that they are responsible for, none of this means a hill of beans when faced with a deficit of £178,000,000,000 (and aren't those zeroes eyewatering?).


Indeed, criticism of attempts to bring in additional revenue by the Government - one end of the equation through which the deficit will be cleared - implies that tax rises, even targetted, proportionate, time-limited ones, are not on the agenda of David and his merry men.


So, I thought that it might be nice to see what they do have in store for us, based on the policy statement on their shiny website...