A zero percent rise in spending.

What the fuck is a zero percent rise? If you get a zero percent pay increase would you be happy? Would you be taken in by a special offer in the supermarket of buy one get 0% extra free? I think for the vast majority of people, in fact anyone with even the most elementary grasp of maths, the answer to both would be no. So how many people does Gordon Brown think will be turning cartwheels with joy at a zero percent increase in public spending? How many votes does he think it will buy him? Well, obviously a zero percent rise is good news for everybody who thinks public spending in Britain is synonymous with spunking away taxpayers' money by the skipload on all sorts of shite with no discernable improvement in the actual services, but few of them would have voted for the twat in the first place. Of course what it's actually about is Gordon trying to appear magnanimous while making Cameron and the Tories look like nasty service slashers, but unfortunately the finances are forcing Labour to make cuts anyway. Worse still for Gordon is that it's got so bad that the best spin he can come up with is a zero percent rise, which is bollocks in every sense. Sadly it just makes him look like either an incompetent tool who can't add up and thinks that zero is a positive integer, a not terribly talented con-man trying to pull the lamest of scams to sell his snake oil, or a deluded fantasist who seriously believes the 24 carat shite he spouts from the bowels of his concrete bunker. Possibly all three.

Don't get me wrong, I'm no fan of Cameron and wouldn't trust the bastard as far as I could throw him* and his PMQ performances can be a bit hit and miss, but come on, he doesn't even have to try that hard when the Prime Mentalist opposite him is talking about zero percent rises. Honestly, it'd be amusing in a slightly pitiful way... except for the minor point that he's fucking up a whole country. Guido commented that Cameron was spot on with his dig about the Lord Mandlesnake being too busy with TV appearances to prep poor deluded, innumerate, insane Gordon for PMQs. Personally I think it wasn't the only one that hit the mark - the one about Gordon Clown's doing far more damage to his own party than he's doing to the Tories was pretty accurate, as was the point that the government doesn't dare to publish a spending review for fear of making crystal clear where the cuts Gordon and his badger faced sock puppet can't possibly avoid will eventually fall. And best of all, this:

This government is planning to cut capital spending: fact.
This government is planning to cut total spending: fact.
And the most important fact of all is that they are incapable of being straight with the British people.

Who are British citizens to believe? The man who points out the hidden cuts the government tries to hide in its figures? Or the man who thinks there is such a thing as a zero percent rise?

For anyone who wants to watch the whole excruciating exchange here it is in nothing remotely resembling any amount of glory. There'll be a prize for everyone who makes it all the way to the end without stopping.**



UPDATE: Guido has a link to the NuLab spending plans that show how deeply in denial - in more than one way - Gordon Clown is. To paraphrase the X Files, the truth is in there.

H/T Guido.


* Which admittedly looks slightly further than I could throw Gordon Clown.
**The prize is a zero percent reduction in your tax this year.