Statistics And Damn Lies

David Cameron has been accused of getting his sums wrong, after appearing to suggest the government had already made most of its proposed spending cuts. The Institute for Fiscal Studies (IFS) said not even half of the austerity measures would be implemented by 2015. 'Cameron wrote in the Times on Thursday: "In this parliament we will have made £100bn of savings while cutting income tax by £10.5bn. In the next parliament we plan to make £25bn of savings while making £7.2bn of income tax cuts." But the IFS said the figures were not comparable. The thinktank said only part of the 2015-2020 period was included and cuts proposed for 2015-16 had been included in the present parliament. It added that the figures relied on different measures that ignored the impact of other pressures.' (Guardian, 31 October) Politicians like to claim that they can control capitalism, whereas it is the other way about. The IFS may be good at exposing politician's errors but they remain mute on the exploiting nature of capitalism. RD