And what about Canada? Canada is facing record debt levels, a collapsing economy, soaring unemployment and the pricking of a U.S. style housing bubble. Peacenik wonders how Canadians will respond to the inevitable British medicine. Peacenik wonders how you will respond. Peacenik wonders how Peacenik will respond.
LONDON — Britain’s Chancellor of the Exchequer unveiled the country’s steepest public spending cuts in decades on Wednesday, sharply reducing welfare benefits and eliminating almost half a million public sector jobs over the next four years as the country seeks to free itself of crushing debt from the global financial crisis.
“Today is the day when Britain steps back from the brink,” George Osborne, the Chancellor, told Parliament.
“It is a hard road but it leads to a better future,” he said, but “to back down now would be the road to economic ruin.”
He said that 490,000 public sector jobs would be lost over the four-year savings program and the size of government departments in London would be cut by one third. Public spending would be cut by a total 83 billion pounds, or around $130 billion, by 2015.
