I was half listening to a budget discussion on the radio this morning and heard someone talking about annual interest payments on the UK National debt where someone said it was either eighteen or eighty billion pounds and no one contradicted him. I’ve not come across anything yet confirming which of the two figures are right, but I feel it must be eighteen, rather than eighty surely.

Even so, eighteen billion is shocking after a ten year programme of austerity which we were told was to “balance the books” on the huge debt left by the last Labour Government - well, that went well didn’t it!

https://www.statista.com/statistics/...ebt-as-gdp-uk/

After looking at that chart, my question is, what was the point of austerity?