Dastardly Balls and his Muttley-like SpAd Alex Bernardelli have been cock-a-hoop all day proclaiming that the experts at the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development were backing his calls for a slower pace to the cuts:

“This is a very significant intervention. Even the OECD, which has traditionally supported government economic policy and George Osborne’s deficit reduction plan, is now saying the Chancellor should consider changing course.”

But as ever it, turned out to be balls.

The Secretary General of the OECD just went on Sky News to say he hasn’t changed his mind at all. Quite the opposite in fact, and he went on to accuse the Shadow Chancellor of misinterpreting what he’d said:

 “No way was there any signal of a change in course. We are continuing to be supportive. We can now say it with an even greater conviction because we just put out our economic outlook yesterday…”

Balls says we should always “listen to the economists”. Did he hear the CBI say that under Labour that “the economy would be weaker because of the impact of a loss of confidence in the markets”? Or how about when the IMF said Osborne’s plan “greatly reduces the risk of a costly loss of confidence in public finances and supports a balanced recovery…” Or what about when Mervyn King, he’s surely an expert, said that the government’s policy “has to be something where a really significant reduction in the deficit, the elimination of a large part of the structural deficit, takes place over the lifetime of a parliament.” Did he miss the British Chambers of Commerce Chief Economist David Kern say he “supports the need for credible deficit cutting measures over the next few years and supports the government’s emphasis on spending cuts rather than tax increases”?

Sounds like someone’s got a bad case of selective hearing.