Most government departments are being asked to produce "illustrative plans" for spending cuts of up to 40%.

The Treasury wants departmental heads to set out how they would cut spending by both 25% and 40% by the end of July.

But education and defence have been given some protection from the worst of the cuts, and will have to draw up plans for cuts of 10% and 20%.

Health will continue to have small rises in its budget, and international aid is also protected.

news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk/10500081.stm

The cuts are bigger because most of the spending was NEW LABOUR buying votes. Loads of "NON JOBS" and waste.

I dont think we will see any real difference.

Only Education - Health - Defence actually needs any money and they are not seeing anywhere near the same level of cuts. NHS spending going up in real terms.

Therefore, instead of 4 police cars arriving at an accident we may see only 3 or even 2 !
Hopefully, speculative court cases will now be dropped saving millions off the JUSTICE BUDGET.
Pay will be frozen for 5 years for ALL public servants.

But it is important to clamp down on the "Bonus" culture - and at this time we dont want to see BANKSTERS paying themselves huge bonuses or getting pay rises seeing as our LOANS to them are what caused much of this mess. It would be a kick in the teeth for the rest of us who now pay 20 % VAT from January.

The alternative is our country going the way of Greece - which is not a good thought.

However, BROWN ran up such a big debt that our country could be paying this back for 50 years. He mortgaged the future to save his own skin - not the World. He gambled and failed.

These are BROWN's CUTS - savings to cover his mad spending.

Anyone who suggests that they are TORY/LIB cuts is basically missing the point - they have not built up this debt. The debt is NEW LABOUR's.