Friday 13 March 2009

The ever cheerful Finance Minister…

IT’S a dirty job but someone has to do it. Nigel Dodds must be feeling that he is doomed like some later day Ebeneezer Scrooge to deliver the bad news on spending cuts.

When he took over from Peter Robinson as finance Minister, the finances of NI PLC looked, if not healthy a far stretch away from ailing.

This week Dodds was warning, again, that the proposed cutbacks in public spending proposed by the Brown Junta, sorry Labour cabinet, would hamstring Northern Ireland’s economics.

Thankfully, the Finance Minister is claiming that what spending efficiencies NI PLC makes, we will be able to retain…

Now the principle is fine, but the mathematics must be arcane. Does this mean that if the public sector has £1 and it saves the Government decreed 3%, it gets to keep the 3p that would equate to. Which means by saving 3p it still has £1…

Government finances…such a tricky equation!

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