The *alleged* fiscal reasons.

That we need billions of pounds of cuts is just a political view.
To say that's why they were necessary would be buying the Tories'
line. The truth is that they are taking advantage of the recession
to pretend that the country has to balance its books as if it were
an individual, and excuse the cuts in services that they couldn't
get away with otherwise. Unfortunately the BBC is so right wing
that it doesn't tell us that.

That's seems a great position - get big enough, run up debts and forget
about them. Just like credit cards, a county's debts cost money and the
higher the interest, the greater that extra cost is.

In the ideal world, we have no debts and all our income (taxes mainly) go
straight to services. In the exact opposite the people servicing our debt
up the interest rate and most of our taxes go on paying interest and very
little on services.

That doesn't even begin to address the issue of our aging population and the
fact that since its inception, the state pension has always worked on a "rob
Peter to pay Paul" basis with no investments being built up to support it.

Now I wasn't born with a silver spoon in my pocket, and there are times I've
run up a debt (mortgage and car) and there are also times when I SHOULD have
run up debt but didn't (I didn't tour Europe whilst a student) but at every
juncture I was ready and able to pay that debt. Sadly the Labour government
seem to have forgotten that last step - how quickly we solve this is a point
for much debate, but it has to be solved so that we can start using taxes to
pay for services, and not for ever increasing debt and interest payments.

Paul DS.