You can't say you weren't warned

Meanwhile, the Indy's Andrew Grice says that David Cameron is determined to win a mandate for cuts to public spending by talking about the issue so openly now.

It's an interesting idea and an interesting position for the tories to take. I instinctively have more sympathy for political parties who tell voters the uncomfortable "truth", rather than what they want to hear. But as Grice points out:

"Vote for me, I'll freeze your pay" is hardly an election-winning slogan.

The other side of what Grice says is that if the tories come to power and take an axe to the public services, no-one will be able to say they weren't warned.

A good piece is spoilt by the common mistake of asserting what Labour and the tories "think" and "believe", with no objective evidence other than the line Grice was spun:

Labour ministers suspect that people may not necessarily translate their general view into a personal sacrifice.

The Tories ... want to be "honest" about the sort of medicine they know they would have to administer. The £158bn a year public sector pay bill cannot be immune, they judge.

Some senior Tories think they would get the benefit of the doubt for two years. Mr Cameron thinks he must hit the ground running, unlike Tony Blair who, the Tory leader believes, continued to act as an opposition candidate after becoming Prime Minister. The Cameroons think the first six months would be decisive.

Four letter words

It's probably trite to point out that spin is a four-letter word but I would make the point that I don't mind what language people use, as long as they don't talk bollocks. In the Independent, Andrew Grice says that Gordon Brown has finally used the c-word, by which he means "cuts" - geddit? You could also make the point - made by many people already - that if you limit the language that people use, you limit their ability to discuss things. Cuts is a simple, short word loved by the media and usually avoided at all costs by politicians. The trouble is, there isn't an agreed definition. Is a failure to increase a budget in "real terms" a cut?

But then, if you say the wrong thing, you get punished. We also learn from the Indy that the "voice of the Shipping Forecast" (or, as the sub-headline puts it "voice of shipping forecast") has been dropped for reasons allegedly unconnected with having said "fuck" after a fuck-up, when he thought his microphone was turned off. Perhaps it should have been.

Old Tricks

Alistair Darling and Caroline Flint have been up to New Labour's old tricks, using spin to bury bad news, . Today, I reveal in Inside Housing that their announcement of “extra” money to show homeowners the government is on their side actually disguises a cut in funding for advice services.

Meanwhile, in the New Statesman, my colleague Martin Bright has an interview with the Chancellor:

Alistair Darling was once the safest pair of hands in the government. A year after becoming Chancellor, our political editor, Martin Bright, asks him where it all went wrong