I don’t think there is any real reason to cut fuel taxes, btw, I just didn’t think it entailed cutting expenditure.

And the government conducts capital expenditure all the time – who cares really what they say they are borrowing for, as long the amount is not obscene the interest rate is the same. In this case they would be borrowing essentially to finance hopefully growth-facilitating tax cuts, not to finance any actual expenditure as such.

Also, if the government really wanted to spend something, it could just borrow it, at very little cost.

in the absence of a magic pudding, cutting petrol taxes must logically result in either increases in other taxes which the same punters pay or cutting services which they dont want to lose

I would have thought that ‘magic pudding’ is called the budget surplus and the enronesque slush funds the government is acumulating to subsidise future spending.
But a minor quibble.

From the WSJ

My findings firmly reject the widely held view that lower taxes inevitably result in cuts in public services, slower growth and widening income inequalities. Today’s policy makers should take note of how tax cuts and the pruning of inefficient government programs can stimulate sluggish economies.

Andrew Bartletts blog is back on-line and spam-free, wasting no time in belatedly weighing into the Henson affair and siding with Hetty.

Sheesh – way to reduce complex debate to one side or t’ other.

By the way, my Big Brother post you linked to is about two years old. Because of the spam attack on my blog, I’m having to ‘scrub clean’ all my old posts and republish them – which I’ll be doing for a while yet. While they all still have their original date, it might mean a big flurry of old posts appearing on your blog reader, so best to check to make sure they’re current (although they are of course all still maginificent reading)