The truth of the matter is that Alister Darling is spot on the growth forcast- the Tory banker who wheeled out this rubbish is just helping his friends into power because like all Torys he wants to keep people on council estates down on getting good jobs.

If anything I think that Gordon needs to be harder on people earning more than 35k a year, we need to cut back get rid of nuclear weapons and open a dialogue with north korea and iran-instead of listening to the pro-jewish rants from blogs like these.

further more jobs like equality managers are vital in helping people in the community-the tories would just start mass deporting.

we don’t need another thatcher-we need good people like gordon brown and ken livingstone to sort out this county

Cameron: “Will the Prime Minister now apologise, correct his statement and admit that he is cutting capital expenditure?”

Brown: “I was just explaining how we had brought forward capital investment to last year and this year. The figure for capital investment in 2006-07 was £36 billion. That has risen to £38 billion in 2008-09 and to £44 billion in 2009-10.”

On the face of it, this appears to be a not entirely unreasonable line – bringing spending forward to avert recession, but… uh oh! Logic Alert!

1. Brown is referring to spending between April-March of the years in question.
2. Given that Brown only admitted in PMQs that there was going to be a recession in the UK by October 2008, having been rather more bullish in a September press briefing (with the BBC reporting that “He said the UK could avoid the worst of the crisis thanks to a flexible labour market and low interest rates”), and prior to summer was paying no regard to the economy, tweaking the tax bands in May 2008, one could reasonably assume that he either did not believe one was coming until summer or early autumn, or chose to mislead the public prior to that time.
3. So when deciding spending in April 2007 (£36bn) for the following year to March 2008 it is reasonable to assume that no changes were made to account for a future downturn, since one was not expected.
4. When deciding in April 2008 and April 2009 for the following years (which were increased, he said yesterday, to £38bn and £44bn), it seems as if the amount brought forward must have been pretty small – a maximum £10bn total would have left those 3 years flat at 2007/8 levels, so unless he had otherwise planned to cut the expenditure during that time, that is the maximum amount “brought forward”.
5. Future years, following the amounts brought forward, are 2010: £36bn; 2011: £29bn; 2012: £26bn, so let’s be generous and assume that the flat 2007 level (£36bn) was still the planned “extra investment” to 2012, we are down by £7bn in 2011 and £10bn in 2012: £17bn down by bringing £10bn forwards. Amazing!!

Bottom line is this: either he planned cuts before, or he plans cuts now, but either conclusion is entirely counter to at least one of his statements in PMQs in the last 2 weeks.

Perhaps the new speaker should show his independence and censure him for misleading the house…

Can’t believe there are only 68,218 signatures on the No.10 web site, asking him to resign. (Still, nearly x2 the next largest.)