The UK government - spending more, earning less

You may not be able to spend your way out of a recession, but you can spend your way into a fiscal crisis. This is how the highly respected think tank - the Institute of Fiscal Studies - coldly described UK public finances in February.

Central government current receipts in February were 9.8% lower than in the same month last year.

Central government current spending in February was 6.5% higher than in the same month last year.

Think about those numbers for a moment; suppose your salary was cut by 10 percent, would you incease your spending by 6.5 percent? Would that be a sensible thing to do? Well, that is what Brown, Darling and the New Labour crew did in February.