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  The 10% Keith are the Labour cuts. I sincerely hope the Conservatives will cut a lot more as that is the responsible thing to do.
  
  I am not talking about 'wants' in respect of what should not be cuts, I am referring to duty. The Defence budget is the only part of public expenditure not to have benefitted from Labour's spending spree. We are also at war in an increasingly dangerous world. To cut Defence would be a dereliction of duty by any Government. The first and more important duty of any Government is national defence and you cannot get that on the cheap. It takes consistent investment over years to maintain a proper defence profile, cut that and you will lose capability that you will not quickly get back (if ever) in response to an emergency.
  
  Howard the debt is a serious problem that will hamstring any recovery.
  
  Brian - I am preparing to give a talk to a series of four seminars being held on Wednesday to an invited business audience in Canterbury. I have therefore been conducting up to date research into the latest thinking economic situation. I need to inform you that the economy has slowed its decline and may be bumping along at the bottom but no real economic growth is expected until early 2010 and then the recovery will be painfully slow.
  
  Thanks to the flexible labour market (one of Mrs T's achievements) and the willingness of private sector employees to take pay cuts, the recession will not meet the worse expectations, but unemployment is still expected to peak at over 3million next year. Put simply people have saved their own jobs by co-operating with their employers.
  
  It is a pity that the public sector has not been offered the opportunity to act in the same responsible way, if they had we might get an even faster recovery once it does take off.

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