Brown's lies and tricks are more quickly seen

The claim "The Tories will cut services, but we shall increase them" was seen through and then published on the web (thank goodness for it) within about 2 hours.

It took the Institute of Fiscal Studies took almost 24 to decipher the recent budget trickery, but now it is an hour or two. Brown's problem will get worse as we experience more of his subterfuge and deceit. We learn his tricks, mainly of definition.

The finding?

If you take Labour's budget announcements on taxation, inflation and debt costs, and the assumption that the Tories made on the effect of protecting the NHS from cuts, then both sides come to the same conclusion, that for the three years from 2011 other departments will each have to face an accumulated deficit of 10% in government funding. This is in real terms.

And if you assume that the NHS will face the same cuts as everybody else, than all departments will face the same accumulated reduction in finance of 7% over the three years, again in real terms.

G. Brown was being quite dishonest, as he must have known, in claiming with present government decisions on taxation and forecasts that government plans were no different to what Lansley, perhaps unwisely, revealed this morning. The figures he quoted were the published expenditure increases in money terms, and took no account of increase in prices or the debt position.