You do know why the Childrens Heart Surgery ward is being shut down don't you ?

(and believe it or not, it's not down to Dave). Or are you just assuming the copy of Socialist Worker that you saw in the street is saying the Tories are the ones to blame for everything ?

So - be positive. If you really want the ward to stay open, then you need to partition Leeds Teaching Hospitals Trust to make their cuts elsewhere. Either that or wait for a Foundation Trust to offer the same service within the region (i.e. same location , different supplier )

You missed off the following heading from your copy of the published graph
“Economy grows by 0.5% in Q1 2011”

And it was not all bad news as the following was also published in the same report.

“Gross domestic product grew by 0.5 per cent in the latest quarter, unrevised from the growth previously published. GDP in the first quarter of 2011 is now 1.8 per cent higher than the first quarter of 2010.

Output in the service industries rose by 0.9 per cent in the latest quarter. The rise this quarter was due to transport, storage & communication increasing by 3.0 per cent; business services & finance rising by 0.6 per cent; government & other services rising by 0.6 per cent; and distribution, hotels and catering rising by 0.8 per cent.

Inventories rose by £1.4 billion on the quarter.

In the first quarter of 2011 the trade deficit in real terms decreased to £5.7 billion compared with £11.5 billion in the previous quarter.

Exports of goods and services rose by 3.7 per cent and imports of goods and services fell by 2.3 per cent.

The GDP implied deflator rose by 2.8 per cent compared with the first quarter of 2010.

Compensation of employees at current prices rose by 1.3 per cent in the latest quarter and is 1.9 per cent higher than the first quarter of 2010.

Total gross operating surplus of corporations rose by 1.4 per cent and is now 6.5 per cent higher than the same period last year.”


You conclude that the sole reason for the disappointing growth figures to be the Coalition’s cuts. As you say you are not an economist and neither am I. However most economists would have included the corresponding increase in commodity costs as being a major factor in restricting growth as the following index clearly shows.

Description: Commodity Price Index, 2005 = 100, includes both Fuel and Non-Fuel Price Indices:

Date Value
"Feb-2009","98.29"
"Mar-2009","100.18"
"Apr-2009","104.18"
"May-2009","114.88"
"Jun-2009","128.16"
"Jul-2009","123.42"
"Aug-2009","132.72"
"Sep-2009","127.54"
"Oct-2009","134.81"
"Nov-2009","140.92"
"Dec-2009","140.93"
"Jan-2010","146.11"
"Feb-2010","142.42"
"Mar-2010","148.88"
"Apr-2010","157.96"
"May-2010","146.48"
"Jun-2010","143.37"
"Jul-2010","143.94"
"Aug-2010","148.36"
"Sep-2010","150.19"
"Oct-2010","159.38"
"Nov-2010","164.69"
"Dec-2010","174.67"
"Jan-2011","181.91"
"Feb-2011","189.82"
"Mar-2011","199.32"
"Apr-2011","208.41"

A recent analysis from the OECD shows that public spending in Britain, as a percentage of GDP will fall by slightly less than the average across the 17 countries in the eurozone in the two years to 2012.

To put matters in perspective for the period 2011/2012 Darling had proposed cuts of 14 billion against Osborne’s 16 billion.

You have frequently used the exaggerated term “slash and burn” to describe your view of the Coalition’s planned cuts in a way similar to the language of a trade unions leader.

An analysis of OECD figures show in a recent report by the Centre for Economics and Business Research (CEBR) that public spending in Britain, as a percentage of GDP, will fall by slightly less than the average across the 17 eurozone countries in the two years to 2012. (UK -2.2% compared with average fall of 2.4% in the eurozone countries)

Public spending in the UK rose very sharply as a share of GDP during the recent recession and the government is now bringing down the public expenditure as a share of GDP in line with most other OECD countries.

The Office of Budget Responsibility has lowered its estimate of how many public sector workers will lose their jobs because of the cuts from 490,000 to 330,000.

While the British government has frozen pay for better off public sector workers, the Greek, Spanish, Irish and Portuguese state employees have had to take pay cuts.

Scaremongering should be left to the union leaders and the BBC

Thats exactly when I lost interest, that point there.

Somebody wake me up when he's gone again.

Typical blogger. All hot air and no substance.

I didn't miss it off, I probably just blinked and missed it altogether.

Even accepting and adjusting (after we had the wrong type of snow) the final quarter figure would have shown 0% 'growth' and then followed by 0% 'growth' for the first quarter of 2011. No/poor growth with inflation rocking up to 5% - stagflation is back, haven't needed that term for a while.

What happened to the recovery that was in evidence when the coalition took office? It appears to be stalling as the OBR, OECD and BOE revise their forcasts down for this year and next still further.