SIR – Economic data exhibited by Tory councillor Francis Lankester (Worcester News, May 7) and Bryan McGinity (Worcester News, May 6) were both hugely selective and quoted simplistically and out of context.
However, Mr McGinity’s list of annual government deficits does actually support Bank of England governor Mervyn King’s assessment that it was the bankers who caused our present financial problems.
They show that it was not until 2008-09, after the financial crash, that the deficit exceeded normal public sector borrowing requirement (PSBR) levels.
Neither contributor bothered to distinguish between ‘structural’ and ‘cyclical’ deficit.
Chancellor George Osborne complains of – and uses as justification – a structural deficit in 2007 of 3.5 per cent of GDP, cheerfully ignoring that, in the last five years of the previous Tory government, this was at 5.2 per cent, 6.6 per cent, 6.2 per cent, 5.6 per cent and four per cent respectively.
The UK entered the financial crisis with net public debt at the (historically) remarkably low level of 36 per cent.
Even now, at 58 per cent, it is well below the 100 per cent-plus of the industrial revolution, never mind the 250 per cent of the “golden 1950s” Butskellite days.
DAVID BARLOW
Worcester
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