Forget the UK's 'deficit', worry about the 'overspend'

By talking about a budget 'deficit' rather than an 'overspend', the government is deliberately clouding the debate on our public finances.

Fraser Nelson over at The Spectator makes an excellent point in this blog.

Cutting the deficit in half - as Alistair Darling aims to do by 2013/14 - sounds like a pretty drastic business. And sure, it won't be easy. But what's far more depressing is that cutting the deficit is not the same as cutting our overall debt. In fact, our overall debt will still be growing.

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John Stepek

John Stepek is a senior reporter at Bloomberg News and a former editor of MoneyWeek magazine. He graduated from Strathclyde University with a degree in psychology in 1996 and has always been fascinated by the gap between the way the market works in theory and the way it works in practice, and by how our deep-rooted instincts work against our best interests as investors.

He started out in journalism by writing articles about the specific business challenges facing family firms. In 2003, he took a job on the finance desk of Teletext, where he spent two years covering the markets and breaking financial news.

His work has been published in Families in Business, Shares magazine, Spear's Magazine, The Sunday Times, and The Spectator among others. He has also appeared as an expert commentator on BBC Radio 4's Today programme, BBC Radio Scotland, Newsnight, Daily Politics and Bloomberg. His first book, on contrarian investing, The Sceptical Investor, was released in March 2019. You can follow John on Twitter at @john_stepek.