Do not worry it looks like they are just staging it! Help!

Sir Sir Samuel Brittan clearly rapped all of us who dare to ask “how we are going to pay for it?” over our knuckles, “A framework for economic stability” December 5. We do not deserve it. In a world where the British Pound should have imprinted “In the British Taxpayer We Trust”, since that is all it has backing it, not asking the question could frighten away all economic stability. The quoted Harold Macmillan “Whatever the temporary difficulties from trying to run too fast, if we stand still, we are lost” might have benefited from having much less darkness around him than what exists now.

Having said that, Sir Brittan needs not to be overly concerned with any excessive prudence. In the US, all similar discussions on how to pay for it, and the screaming about the implications for the taxpayers, anyhow all end up with new tax-rebates being given.

Finally on Brittan’s quoting Friedman’s recipes for fiscal stability, how strange he did not comment on the absence in them of the regressive VAT.