Deficit fibbers

“He knows the deficit hasn't been caused by "waste", but seeing as that starting point is a lie, the stories they tell might as well be made up completely”. Mark Steel writes a knockabout on the deficit and Grant Shapps in the Independent…….

Apparently last week Housing Minister Grant Shapps wrote: "Extraordinary! Manchester threatens to sack 2,000 staff while employing a Twitter Tzar. So this was reported and read out on BBC news until it turned out this was entirely made up, and the job was to run Manchester council's website, of which Twitter was one tiny part” writes Steel.

“So it was as honest as saying, "Extraordinary! Local authorities are employing a 'Wheeeeeee Tzar' to spend all day sliding down a pole" and then admitting it was a fireman.”

"...This isn't to say there isn't genuine unnecessary expenditure in our society. For example there's a Housing minister who makes cuts in every service he can, but personally manages to travel by his own private plane."

A fun knockabout this may be, but it does throw into sharp focus the use of media created caricatures of councils to divert the blame from the banks and justify the Tory ideological attack on public services.

http://www.independent.co.uk/opinion/commentators/mark-steel/mark-steel-grant-shapps-at-last-ndash-a-man-to-really-annoy-us-2194342.html