For Osborne it's clear to see where he's coming from. Afterall, there's a lot of snow up in Klosters Ski Resort. Maybe he got confused and thought that the snow capped peaks he saw out of his window in the morning was Ben Nevis. It's not like he'dt know the difference, Tories don't really know a thing about Scotland.
For old Tony though there really isn't much of an excuse. When he isn't answering questions in the Iraq inquiry then he's going round the world getting paid millions of pounds to talk at dinners or as a Middle East envoy, which always struck me as odd because it was a region he helped to make even worse than it was to begin with. Maybe it's penitence or a really bad joke, who knows.
Anyways, the shrinking economy isn't the fault of the snow, at least not entirely. For starters the snow really wasn't that bad as to bring the economic recovery to a grinding halt and it didn't last for three months. It may have had some effect in the run up to Christmas, with some people snowed in or looking outside and thinking: "Hmm, maybe not today..." No, rather than snow I blame it on poor handling of the economy by Osborne and it's hard to see it getting better any time soon.
The increase in VAT will hit the retail sector hard, a major source of income for the economy. Considering how fragile it is at the moment, increasing VAT was probably the worst thing that he could have done. Lowering the VAT rate is what helped to get Britain out of the recession in the first place and helped to stimulate growth. Despite all the cuts, there's less going in to the Government coffers in the first place, making it all a bit redundant. Thankfully it seems that Osborne is reconsidering the planned 1p increase in fuel duty due to the large increase seen already due to the VAT rise.
In addition, unemployment is ever increasing, reaching 2.5 million at last count. Consequently, people are only buying the essentials. Add to that Mervyn King, Governor of the Bank of England, saying that total take home pay would inevitably be reduced, the amount of money going into the governments coffers is getting less and less.
What Osborne appears to have forgotten is that having cuts for the sake of reducing government expenditure doesn't guarantee that the economy will recover. No economy will get better if everyone is too poor to go out and buy things. If anything, the poor will get even poorer as they take out loans they can't afford. It's typical Tory policy as the only people who'll be able to take the brunt of all this is the rich.
If this is what it's like with the Liberal Democrats watering down Tory policy, then thank God we didn't get a Tory majority...
