………so……I wonder….to clear the decks completely of anything which might compromise the Labour strategy ( We’ll spend this year & next year -after that we dont’ know-could be OK though)..they need to zap the PBR…which means the Budget has to go…..so a GE before a Budget ???

Economic optimism is inextricably linked to economic confidence. If people are confident that the economic position will improve, they will be more optimisitic about the out-turn. If they are more optimistic about the future, they will gain in confidence about the present, which in turn feeds their view of the future.

The self-reinforcing relationship between optimism and confidence also works the other way round. If people lack confidence, they will become pessimistic. If they are pessimistic, their confidence level falls. etc.etc.

The relevance in terms of polls and voting intentions is that if Government action / inaction undermines confidence, this will inevitably feed through into economic optimism. Playing fast and loose with what information about future spending plans and their consequences for the public finances is made available and when is not action calculated to inspire confidence.

Attacking one’s opponents on the basis of an issue sublty different from the original question is also a classic obfuscation technique by those who have something to hide.

Begs the question as to who is being rattled, and why ?

Clearly, the Tories have an interest in playing down any kind of optimism on the basis that it might just lead to such an improvement.

Telling fibs re the abolition of all figures apart from Brown and Darling’s just shows how rattled the opposition is becoming.

Looks like those are the only figures we will get now.

Not true, and nor is your denial.

There will be plenty of official, independent figures. It’s the comprehensive spending review that’s been put off, not the announcements of results or policy announcements.

“taking n £bn from here & putting x£bn there-Balls did this on Marr & Mandelson did it on R4 this morning.”

and Gordon Brown just did it in the HofC. Nothing wrong with that. Changing priorities, identifying savings. Making commitments, and exposing the Conservatives’ position for what it is – “do nothing to help”.

John-I meant figures with which economists , the nation’s creditors & political oponents can make judgements about Labour’s plans for FUTURE management of the Public Finances.

We are to be left,according to Mandelson, with out- of -date Budget figures as we approach 2010-an election year.

“plenty of time and opportunity for the public to consider the differences in what spending Labour proposes and what the Tories propose.”

Well of course-that’s the cunning plan!
Labour have just been caught cold by the Tories-with the help of IFS-quoting Labour’s own Public Finances forecasts & demonstrating that they imply Spending reductions.

…so-what to do?…we won’t give them any projections at Economy level at all. We’ll just talk about taking n £bn from here & putting x£bn there-Balls did this on Marr & Mandelson did it on R4 this morning.

Future spending & taxation policy only has meaning in the context of future Public Finances .
By the simple Mandelsonian ploy of saying they can’t do those now because they don’t know what the future holds, Labour think they have carte blanche to quote any figures they like.

They have of course demonstrated that none of their Public Finance plans will have any validity until they declare the Treasury forecasts on which they are based.

You wouldn’t run a whelk stall like this-& your Bank would call time if you tried.

I haven’t swallowed anything john-I said some days ago in a post here, that Labour’s chosen attack of “Investment” vs “Cuts” post a GE, would only succeed after the disastrous exposure of the last Budget, if Darling produced no more official forecasts before the GE

But I didn’t imagine they would dare to do it.

There’ll be plenty of time and opportunity for the public to consider the differences in what spending Labour proposes and what the Tories propose.

You’ve just swallowed Cameron’s blustering attempt to distract from the fact that he would take precisely the same approach to the recession that his party took in the early nineties.

Talk about riots on the streets, it chills the blood to think what would have happened if he’d been elected just before RBS almost went under.

Since when did the ONS take over the role of the Treasury in planning Public Finances?

Mandleson said on R4 this morning that the CSR is postponed till after the election.
He said this was because of the difficulty of forecasting in the recession…..you really couldn’t make this up.

However, that’s the system aka capitalism. Let’s hope more like you see the light and reject the nonsensical aspects of it.

There are plenty of opportunities for entrepreneurs to start successful enterprises, tax breaks, help with funding etc. It’s certainly improved since the (Conservative Govt) days when James Dyson couldn’t get backing. Those were the days of course, when to get a great cleaning product manufactured, there was only one place to do it…Japan.