Will UK spending cuts work??

I wonder if the UK public sector spending cuts will actually work? Chancellor George Osborne highlighted the various elements of the £83bn package yet at the same time the Bank of England is considering printing more money (quantitative easing) to get the economy moving. I suppose it makes some kind of sense to build an aircraft carrier with no planes and launch a money saving assault against the disabled classes. But I was more impressed with the Irish government, which pushed through pay cuts for the country's public sector.

If the massive public sector pension liabilities are true, then the imperative is to cut more than the possible 500,000 jobs, which won't be fun. The jobs are to go over four years and Mr Osborne hopes most of the strain will be taken by natural wastage.
A hope in vain I am afraid.

In the early 1990s the Tory administration got rid of a major budget deficit without scaring everybody to death. It took a few years but it allowed my old friend Gordon Brown to go on the splurge later, since he inherited such a good fiscal situation. Any improvement in the public finances will take time. I don't think private job creation will be enough to offset the public sector job losses. Together with quite
a few of the disability living allowance and incapacity claimants moving to other benefits, then you could increase the British unemployment total by a cool one million without breaking sweat.