Sunward I’ve climbed, and joined the
tumbling mirth of sun-split clouds

Via the Chancellor’s Autumn Statement (PDF), the revised trajectory of public sector net debt:

Click for Autumn Statement Green Book (PDF)

City AM reported back in July on a poll that,

asked whether the coalition would be keeping the national debt the same over the next four years, increasing it by £350bn or cutting it by £350bn. Just nine per cent got it right – 21 per cent thought it would be staying the same and an astonishing 70 per cent thought the national debt would be cut by £350bn.

Allister Heath went on to call this widespread failure to distinguish between debt and deficit “a massive failure of journalism”. I wonder what the survey would report today, now that the debt will be even larger.

The deficit is what the Government intend to reduce: that is, the shortfall between taxes and spending. Our debt will not just continue to balloon, but to ballon to a greater degree than forecast.

See also:

• Why public spending is hard to cut
• Britain’s Trillion Pound Horror Story

Via Open Europe:

The European Commission will next week propose that the budget for the European Union in 2012 should be increased from its current level.

The proposal will set in train a prolonged period of wrangling between the Council of Ministers and the European Parliament, over both the total level of spending and the allocation of the budget to specific policy areas.

As ever, our EU overlords appear to be on a different and quite remote planet. You can read more here.  I made a related speech on the EU Budget which you can find here.

A binding in/out referendum is long overdue but, in the meantime, thanks to the LibDems, who let us down over Lisbon, we now have to ask the public whether they want AV. Hardly the key deficiency in our constitution, is it?

I chose tonight to support Douglas Carswell’s modest and conservative amendment to the draft EU Budget Bill:

Line 2, leave out from ‘2011’ to end and add ‘is concerned at the above-inflation increase being made to Britain’s EU budget contribution; believes that, at a time when the Government is poised to make reductions in public spending elsewhere, it is wrong to increase that contribution; and calls on the Government to reduce Britain’s EU budget contribution’.

This amendment was not successful.

I wish Justine Greening every success as she sets out to defend British interests in the EU budget negotiations tomorrow.

Via The TaxPayers’ Alliance – Economics 101: The IFS spreadsheet doesn’t tell us what policy choices are best for the poor:

Suppose you invented a policy, some kind of economic miracle, which doubled the incomes of the poorest ten per cent of families without the Government spending a pound.  That would reduce benefit spending.  It would also increase tax revenues from the poorest.  The same method that the IFS are using in their reports would show the effects of that policy as horribly regressive, cutting spending on the poor and shifting the fiscal scales against them.

Of course that is an extreme and artificial example.  But it shows the big problem with the IFS analysis, which essentially assumes that the fortunes of the poor add up to the amount of Government money spent on them.

Highlights from the past week:

• On Monday, I attended the beginning of Armed Forces Week in Wycombe.
• Budget statement on Tuesday by the Chancellor. I spoke in the debate receiving a warm reception from Prof. Kevin Dowd on the Institute for Economic Affairs’ blog. The first Cobden Centre Austrian School Seminar began at the Institute of Economic Affairs.
• Wednesday saw a major post-budget event by the TaxPayers’ Alliance and the IEA, followed by lunch with Secretary of State for Health, Andrew Lansley, to discuss health reform and Wycombe Hospital.
• Writing for ConservativeHome on Thursday, I explained why economists disagree, why they are so often wrong and where economic thinking goes next. I followed this up on Saturday with some essential market analysis of the crisis from The Cobden Centre.
• On Thursday evening, I explained to like-minded comrades over dinner how we might deliver and entrench a new open society.
• On Friday, I visited the magnificent Skidz project, which delivers motor training for young people, before dropping in on the Schools Linking Network Celebration event at Adams Park. The evening was beautifully rounded off with a wonderful Patron’s summer party in Hambleden Valley.
• Yesterday, I visited Desborough Playden before enjoying Marlow Bottom’s Rose Carnival. I ended the day giving prizes to inspiring young people at the Muslim Education Centre on Totteridge Drive.

And all this reminds me: time to begin a new Google map for my work as MP…