We can't help thinking there might be a connection here Polly

Polly Toynbee tells us that:

The next few years will be a carbon copy of post-2010 austerity, with a massive extra 8% cut to most public services – worse this time for coming on top of the last lost decade and the damage done by this crisis.

That may be a good idea, may not be, that’s not the point we wish to, umm, point to. Rather:

No one thought the economy would plummet by an unthinkable 10%,

That’s the damage that has been done by this crisis. There is 10% less of everything. That’s what the economy is, that everything, and a fall in GDP of 10% really is saying that all production, or all incomes, or all consumption - any one of the three equalling either of the other two - have fallen by 10%.

If we devote that same portion of everything we have to those public services then spending upon them should fall by 10% that is. As it happens the prediction - threat according to Polly - is that such diversion of resources will only fall by 8%. That is, there will be a rise in the portion of everything we devote to such things.

Which we can prove by looking at it the other way, the tax burden is predicted to rise by percentage points of GDP over the same period. That is, given those very numbers that Polly presents us with, far from having cuts in the public sector we are expanding it, we are spending a greater portion of everything we have upon them.

We don;t think we ought to be but then again that’s another point to be making.