Barring the rather unfortunate departure of David Laws, the Cameron-Clegg coalition seem to be getting stuck in with the cuts and making a decent fist of it. Come on, if he’d wanted to keep his private life private then he shouldn’t have claimed the £40,000, it wasn’t as though he needed it.
The big cuts are coming and the only reason Chancellor George and his elderly assistant Vince are acting so swiftly is that it helps convince the money men from around the world that Britain is not like the Costa countries and we deserve to retain our top notch credit rating.
The message is simple: “We are not Greece… or Spain… or Portugal.”
That’s it.
The good news is that the pound is getting stronger against the euro and, if you have a job, then your European holiday is going to be cheaper. And you’ll be able to ensure brilliant return service in any Greek restaurant or bar if you leave just a little tip.
Hurrah.
The same increase is not true of the dollar-sterling exchange rate, but it’s probably worth giving the United States a miss this year anyway as the beaches are a bit mucky.
But holidays are probably not at the forefront of your mind if you work in the public sector though.
Yes, that’s all you council employees and Whitehall penpushers. (NHS staff are excluded because you make far too much noise, and there’s a lot of you, the government will wait a while to squeeze you).
I’m sure a lot of you are already distressed to see BP’s profits collapse as one Heath-Robinson repair plan for the leaking oil pipe after another goes wrong.
The company’s share dividends contribute a huge amount to pension funds and despite that old adage “Never put all your eggs in one basket”, a lot of pension providers appear to have done just that with BP.
Whoops. But you just know someone is going to be worse off and you can bet it won’t be fund managers.
Meanwhile, you council employees are set for a hefty round of redundancies and don’t expect too much sympathy from us.
Unfortunately, you ignored for years that you are directly accountable to the voter.
It’s simple: we elect the councillors, the councillors employ officers and staff to do our bidding which includes mending the roads, running schools and taking away our rubbish etc.
We haven’t forgotten how you’ve wasted our money on foreign jollies, ill-considered investments in Icelandic Banks and allowing some of the most aesthetically offensive architecture to be thrown up in our districts and boroughs.
And when it comes to spending our cash, we’ve even had a sneaking suspicion that some of you naughty council officers have misled elected councillors.
Yes I know a lot of councillors are genuinely sincere in their wish to provide a better life for people but many know nothing about finance… AND REALISTIC WAGES FOR CHIEF OFFICERS.
And so it’s payback time.
You council folk are first in the firing line and a lot of council tax payers are going to enjoy it.
All you five-a-day coordinators and the like, dreamed up by Labour, are out of the door pretty swiftly anyway.
Then it’ll be the turn of the stupidly overpaid who’ll have their salaries made public and, more importantly, give us all a good laugh as they seek to justify them.
It’s a financial crisis, but there’s going to be some entertainment along the way.