Fiscal headroom, Digestive biscuits, and the spring statement nobody wanted to read
Fiscal headroom, Digestive biscuits, and the spring statement nobody wanted to read
By Alan Nafzger | Bohiney Magazine | The London Prat
UK Bankruptcy: The Nation Checks the Sofa Cushions for Spare GDP
Britain is, fiscally speaking, a man at a casino who has been explaining to his wife for three hours that he is “basically up” while being forty thousand pounds down. The Keep Calm and Carry Debt analysis that ran this week confirmed what most of us suspected: the national finances are structured around the same principles as a student overdraft, but with worse interest rates and more flags.
The Treasury’s Bold Strategy: Optimism
I called the Treasury press office for comment. They were very pleasant and sent me a PDF. The PDF contained the phrase “fiscal headroom” seventeen times. Fiscal headroom is what economists call it when there is no actual money but the spreadsheet has not technically exploded yet. It is the financial equivalent of “it’s fine, the check engine light has been on for years.”
The Financial Times reports the situation with its customary elegance: dense paragraphs of bad news delivered in a font that costs more than most people’s car payments. I read it. I needed a biscuit afterwards. Two biscuits. Digestives, obviously. We are on a budget.
Satirical Observations in Lieu of Solutions
Bohiney’s piece on the world’s most expensive life coach this week accidentally described the Chancellor’s Spring Statement better than any broadsheet managed. The coach charges twelve hundred pounds a session to tell clients to “reframe scarcity as abundance.” The Chancellor charges nothing and achieves the same result. One of these is worse value.
SOURCE: https://bohiney.com/worlds-most-expensive-life-coach/
More satire: The Poke