Misprint

Reading reference 1 this (Monday) morning, I caught the FT out with a misprint, the first time I remember noticing such a thing. In the second paragraph, we have £15mn when we should have £15bn. Furthermore, I have no idea how Caoimhe Archibald's (a lady) first name should be pronounced. I can't be the first person to ask Bing, because he comes straight back with 'kee + va'. I wonder how the pronunciation came to be so unstuck from the spelling?

Partly because it is all mixed up with the consequentials business noticed at reference 2, I was prompted to take a short excursion into government finances, in particular those of Northern Ireland.

The FT story is that on a budget of £15bn the Northern Irish managed an overspend of £559mn last year, which will be clawed back from this year's allocation unless the executive manage to balance their books. The current story is that they are £769mn short, £500mn of which will be covered by the (consequentials) uplift from the Treasury, leaving £269mn of cuts to planned spending in Northern Ireland if they are to avoid the Treasury axe. Government accounting! That aside, it does not look very clever when the overspend is such a large fraction of the total. A system which is not working.

And just think, if Northern Ireland were part of Ireland proper, all that money the Irish have just got in back (corporation) taxes from Apple, would do nicely to sort out Northern Ireland. Instead of draining money out of the UK pot.

I then turned to the March budget of the Tories (reference 3), to find a couple of helpful charts.

Reminding me, if nothing else, first that government is spending around 10% of its take on debt repayments. Not a very good place to be. And second that if you promise not to raise taxes on working people, that is to say income tax and national insurance contributions, perhaps VAT as well, you do not leave yourself enough room to manoeuvre.

PS: I think capital spending is included in the figures above. But I have not checked that point.

References

Reference 1: Northern Ireland on track for £769mn budget overspend: Stormont executive expects little largesse from UK chancellor as it struggles to balance its books - Jude Webber, Financial Times - 2024.

Reference 2: https://psmv5.blogspot.com/2024/10/consequentials.html.

Reference 3: Spring Budget - H M Treasury - 2024. HC560.