Sums

I know that UK PLC is a little bit in debt, that it's overspent this month and is hiding in the bathroom with the music turned up so that it won't hear the phone call from the bank. I know that Dave is looking at panicking a bit.

I can see that it looks like a good idea to lay off tens of thousands of public sector workers. No employees for government to pay = no pay bill = joy all round, right? Looks attractive. That'll sort stuff out right? More dosh to cut that overdraft. Excellent.

What I can't quite understand is why, given that we quite a lot of people working in the Treasury, no one's looked at the other side of that equation. To whit no employees = (hefty redundancy + benefits bill) + (inability to spend non-existent pay in UK shops and businesses) = layoffs in private sector + second increase in benefits bill.

Very rarely is public policy as simple as it seems. That's why we need to elect really clever people to run the country.

Which is, as I think I've argued before, the problem.