new finance office

[merryberry]

dear god they've invented another govt. department. something like the 'office for watching the pennies so the pounds take care of themselves'

did anyone catch the real name of it? it is essentially a replica of the national audit office, but with the pm's ear, from what i heard of the news item. my 4 year old crapped himself and i couldn't hear anymore of the story. i'm sure his prblem was biological, not political commentary.

oh i REALLY want to go read more about this. our grand plan for saving uk cash here in merry househoild has always been, go around at night, closing govt departments and leaving them closed if noone noticed. there's ever so many the strategy could work for.

It's called the Office of Budget Responsibility. Can't seem to find much about it by Googling though!

It's more in the news today. There are other independent bodies that produce statistics... crime figures is one, I think.... precisely so that government can't massage the numbers. Up to now, the statisticians can say 'growth likely to be x%' but the Chancellor can say 'I'm more optimistic - growth likely to be x-plus-a-little-bit%', and this is what gets presented in tbe budget. If the Chancellor has less wiggle-room because it's an independent department generating the numbers, the budgeting process should be more accurate. I expect it will be the same people doing the same job but their reporting lines will be different.

I think they should throw open the books so we can see just how far deep in the mire we really are, and what needs to be done to get out of it.

can't believe Liam Byrne left David Laws a message saying "There's no money left."

He says he hopes Laws hasn't lost his sense of humour.