I think you have to be very careful about generalising the concept of a structural deficit to the current situation in the UK.

I feel that there has been a bit of shroud waving regarding the issue, the bigger issue to me is tax avoidance and the fact that the state seems always to be playing catch-up in determining the tax evasion / avoidance boundary as defined by our business friendly judiciary.

We are currently looking at 36/37% in tax take and 47/48% in spending which compares to the position going in to the Credit Crunch of 39% tax take and 42% spending. We need to aim to get back to that situation in the medium term not slash and burn when there is great uncertainty and the growing possibility of a double dip.

Regarding the specifics of the situation in 90′s Canada, what about the low C$ policy and the boom in the Ontario auto industry. Chrysler did their bit with the LH model which came out in 93 but all the plants blossomed in the years to 2000.

Finally what was the position in the provinces?
Did they not have issues dealing with reduced Federal monies?
Also the quality of services was also under pressure even when the national government was running a surplus.

Consequently I feel that the lesson from Canada is only being pushed by the right wing dog boiling establishment as a fig leaf to cover their own tax cutting agenda.

They will cut spending when times are tough.
They will cut taxes when times are good.
They do not want to pay for the New Labour welfare state of 2008/09.
I fear we will soon look back on that period as some sort of golden age.

Unfortunately too few people realised what we had at the time.

Nice try, I await you anti GB laundry list as supplied by the Forger’s Gazette with interest.

Any chance you could up your game and develop your own thoughts on the matter?

I’ve started a blog (http://mandymeikle.wordpress.com/) to try to get some debate going. We really have to start thinking how the future is going to look without abundant supplies of cheap energy.

It is really going to hurt us to fix Gordon’s crashed economy.