Retaining Essential Services

George the Progressively Osborne's first stab at driving the economy into a double-dip recession has been greeted with laughter and joy by the people who really matter. "If you think this is jolly, wait until the real fun starts," said Miles Templeman, the director general of the Institute of Bonuses. His counterpart at the Confabulation of Bonus Increases, Richard Lambert, said: "Private sector firms had to lay off hundreds of thousands during the recession so that executive pay and share prices could remain in holy harmony, so it's only fair that the public sector should suffer now." (While not literally correct in every case, all quotes are at least as true in spirit as Lord Ashcroft's tax promises.) Lambert continued: "We believe there is still considerable scope to make even greater savings by re-engineering public service delivery" or, in Oldspeak, abolishing public service delivery. Without harming front-line services, of course. "This is really the tip of the iceberg," rejoiced Philip Shaw, a member of Alistair Darling's favourite class of benefits claimants. "There is a saying that the first cut is the deepest, but this is certainly not the case in fiscal consolidation". The British Chamber of Commerce urged the government to freeze public sector wages across the board and come up with "a clear plan to reform public sector pensions" or, in Oldspeak, abolish public sector pensions. The BCC's director general did offer the comforting news that he would ruthlessly scrutinise all the forthcoming cuts to ensure that "investment that supports business growth" or, in Oldspeak, the continuation of taxpayer-funded benefits for the people who got us into this mess, "is not a casualty of the spending squeeze". So that's all right.