Off-target Osborne keeps shooting down the economy

Will the Autumn Statement come clean about the coalition’s failure on deficit and debt or keep going down the path of austerity?

To keep doing the same thing but expecting a different result is said to be pointless or even insane. If so what George Osborne will unveil in the Autumn Statement on Wednesday is stark raving bonkers.
Sure, he will raid the piggy bank for some money. He may whisk some money out of thin air, or do the Treasury equivalent of raiding the gas meter.
So, these are, for us the real questions the Coalition has to answer this week:
Why have you have failed to meet your deficit and Government debt targets?
When will the squeeze on real wages end and when will work begin to pay in coalition Britain?
What is your plan to bring the NHS back from the brink of collapse? And crisis money from the petty cash won’t cut it.
What’s your plan to deal with the chronic and growing housing shortage?
Why does the coalition insist on ÂŁ48 billion more cuts and the creation of permanent austerity?
We will see if there are any answers.
But prepare for the spin and the funny money on Wednesday. It’s started already with the ÂŁ2 billion “extra” for the NHS.

That money appears to have been laundered on the Treasury’s full spin cycle. Expect more laundered money to still be wet on Wednesday despite full use of Treasury tumble dryers.

This is because the Coalition has only two items on its agenda. March 30 next year when Parliament is dissolved and the general election formally starts.
Then polling day itself on May 7 when the coalition faces the music.
After nearly five years of punishing austerity Osborne’s ConDems promised the budget deficit would be gone. It was the whole point of the coalition.
Government debt would also be under control. We were all in it together, and the pains would be worth the gains.
We’ve all seen the pain of public sector cuts, job losses and the greatest squeeze on the standard of living since Gladstone was in Number 10. Job creation has often been minimum wage alongside zero or reduced hours contracts with bosses pointing their staff towards top ups from in-work benefits.
And the gains are nowhere. The budget deficit is not only still there, it is growing. Government debt is up, not down.
No one knows what they’re on at the Treasury, which keeps claiming the plan is on target. It isn’t.
Some estimates suggest economic growth might be up to 3% a year. If that was feeding through to ordinary households we should be basking in a bit of economic sunshine.

But instead Coalition austerity still has us in its icy grip. If there is growth it has no warm glow for most of us.

Osborne’s prescription doesn’t work and it won’t work. Already Cameron is warning of troubles ahead in the world economy just in case the plan goes even more pear-shaped next year.

On Wednesday the Coalition will dish out all sorts of targets. They don’t matter because they are fantasy.
Osborne’s track record shows he can’t hit a cow’s backside with a large frying pan from 2 feet let alone hit any of his own key targets.
There is different future. And it isn’t based on the principle that it’s all pain and no gain. Another £48 billion in cuts still won’t work.
We can work our way out of the current problems. But we can’t cut our way out of them.