Gordon Brown and the huge increase in debt and tax.

Liam Halligan, in the Sunday Telegraph, 14 October 2007, wrote:

"According to the OECD, Britain is now on course to rack up the highest fiscal deficit of the world's major industrialised economies." - Brown mortgaged our future to secure his own - Telegraph

The UK government "now expects to levy taxes amounting to a colossal £551bn during 2007/08, rising to £581bn next year.

"That's close to 40p in every £1 earned in this country – and almost double the annual tax take when Labour came to power.

"Even more worryingly, government expenditure is higher still – now accounting for more than 42 per cent of the economy, a 25-year high.

"And after years of high public spending – much of it wasted on unreformed, monolithic state structures – the Government's books are now splattered with red ink."

Tim Hames, in The Times, 15 October 2007, wrote:

"State spending as a proportion of national income has risen sharply in the past seven years – from 39.8 per cent to an estimated 44.1 per cent – and that this also masks massive disparities. (Scrounging regions? No, I must beg to differ Tim Hames - Times ...)

Ulster 70.5 %

Wales 64.3%

The North East of England 63 %

the North West 54 %

Scotland 54 %

Yorkshire and Humberside 49.5 %

The South East of England 33.5%

(France 53.2 %, Italy 50 % Germany 44.1%.)

"The division is more extreme in Germany between the West and an old East still struggling to adjust to capitalism almost two decades after the Berlin Wall was toppled. It is very stark between the rich north and the poor south of Italy."

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