Well, I wouldn’t want to be a politician right now!

Across Europe we’ve got governments from one end of the spectrum to the other and I don’t think any of them are trying to increase government spending (and therefore borrowing). The problem with most European economies, and the UK economy, is that the Public and Private sectors are intrinsically linked; cutting public-spending hurts the private-sector too because the public-sector is the private-sector’s biggest customer.

Globalisation has damned us all to an extent; forget the ‘extra’ government from being in the EU because we’re all-in-it-together even if we weren’t in the EU. Our banks have lent to Greece, Spain and Ireland, we don’t want to lend any more to them so their borrowing-costs go up and the chances of them defaulting (and us loosing our money) go up. Vicious circle!

Still a ‘fuel-duty-hike’ is all the simple British newspaper reader understands…..so it is headline news! :rolleyes: